New Objectivity - 916

Narrator (f):

The new ideal of the female body of the 1920s was manifested in a boyish, androgynous figure reproduced in magazines, advertising, and cinema but also frequently in the fine art of the time. In the world of entertainment, it was the famous Tiller Girls who represented the model of the slender, thoroughly trained body.

Narrator (m):

Women artists such as Kate Diehn-Bitt, Gussy Hippold-Ahnert, and Anita Rée, by contrast, were interested more in a manner of depiction in which psychology and emotion played a part. The numerous nudes of the 1920s also reflect the break with sexual taboos and for a cult of beauty and youth. The interest in “modeling” the body was a phenomenon of the 1920s that has parallels to today. This fashionable image of the modern body contrasted with more voluminous and less dynamic one, as the example by Pablo Picasso but also those of Alexander Kanoldt and Gussy Hippold-Ahnert show.

Narrator (f):

From 1922 to 1925, she lived in Positano, a dream destination for many artists of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, and there she found a clear, objective style, usually with a solidly joined construction, and was indebted to the Italian painting of the early Renaissance. This is evident in a work she produced in Italy: Seminude before a Prickly Pear—a depiction of sensuous eroticism that is also about the seemingly ancient unity of human being and floral world.