Gerda Wegener, an Art Deco illustrator, painted lighthearted scenes of Parisian women sunbathing, dancing in nightclubs or promenading in parks.
Her subject matter and jewel-tone palette contrasted with her tragic personal life: her first husband, Einar Wegener, occasionally posed in women’s clothing for her paintings and then underwent a sex-change operation and died from complications after surgery, and her second husband burned through her money before their divorce.
(Next year filming is expected to begin on a movie about Einar and Gerda Wegener, starring Nicole Kidman as Einar and Gwyneth Paltrow as Gerda.)
Wegener, who died in obscurity in 1940, prolifically produced watercolors for magazines, book publishers and advertising agencies in the 1910s and ’20s, and her work ended up widely scattered in private collections and a few museums.
Her first major United States show, with about 50 pieces (mostly priced at a few thousand dollars), runs through Nov. 25 at Leonard Fox Ltd. at 790 Madison Avenue, between 66th and 67th Streets.
The gallery staff can point out which svelte female figures, in the scenes of cafe or boudoir life, probably depict Einar in drag.
Gerda Wegener's 1928 watercolor
“L'Apéritif,” in new show.
