Portrait de Meret Oppenheim

Leonor Fini’s powerful painting Portrait de Meret Oppenheim bears witness to the meeting of two extraordinary 20thcentury artists. Painted in 1938 it was executed at the height of Fini’s powers. Fini had just been included in the pivotal exhibition Fantastic Art, Dada, Surrealism at New York’s Museum of Modern Art (in 1936), and was also represented by the New York-based gallerist, and champion of Surrealist art, Julien Levy (who later gave Dorothea Tanning two solo exhibitions in 1944 and 1948). In 1937 she had also designed the iconic bottle, and packaging, of Elsa Schiaparelli’s (1890 – 1973) perfume Shocking, based on the shape of Mae West’s (1893 – 1980, American actress, singer, comedian, screenwriter, playwright, and sex symbol whose career spanned over seven decades) torso.

German-born Swiss Surrealist artist and photographer Meret Oppenheim (1913 – 1985), however, found herself at a crossroads around this time. In 1936, at the beginning of her career, Oppenheim had her first solo exhibition in Basel, Switzerland, at the Galerie Schulthess. She was also included in two important Surrealist exhibitions outside of Paris: The International Surrealist Exhibition at New Burlington Galleries, London and Fantastic Art, Dada, Surrealism at The Museum of Modern Art, New York (where Fini also exhibited). Many of her iconic pieces, like Ma gouvernante / My Nurse (1936/1967, metal plate, shoes, string and paper, 14 x 33 x 21 cm, Moderna Museet, Stockholm) consisted of everyday objects arranged to allude to female sexuality and feminine exploitation by the opposite sex and her paintings focused on the same themes. Her abundant strength of character and her self-assurance informed each work she created, conveying a certain comfortable confrontation with life and death.

Her originality and audacity established her as a leading figure in the Surrealist movement. Fantastic Art, Dada, Surrealism at The Museum of Modern Art, for instance, showed her iconic Object (Le Déjeuner en fourrure) (1936, assemblage sculpture, fur-covered cup, saucer and spoon, Museum of Modern Art, New York, United States of America) alongside works by artists like Salvador Dalí (1904 – 1989), and after seeing Oppenheim’s, nowadays legendary, piece Object (Le Déjeuner en fourrure) Man Ray (1890 - 1976) famously anointed her as ‘Surrealism’s muse’. This was validated by Alfred H. Barr, Jr. (1902 – 1981, American art historian and the first director of the Museum of Modern Art, New York) who, following his inclusion of the work in MoMA’s 1936–37 exhibition Fantastic Art, Dada, Surrealism,remarked:

Few works of art in recent years have so captured the popular imagination.... The ‘fur-lined tea set’ makes concretely real the most extreme, the most bizarre improbability. The tension and excitement caused by this object in the minds of tens of thousands of Americans have been expressed in rage, laughter, disgust or delight.

Things were about to change for Oppenheim, however. Struggling as an artist, after having met early success, she worried about her development. In 1937, Oppenheim returned to Basel, training as an art conservator to ensure her financial stability. This marked the beginning of a creative crisis that lasted until 1954. Although she maintained some contact with her friends in Paris, she created very little and destroyed, or failed to finish, much of her production.

Oppenheim took a hiatus from her artistic career in 1939, after an exhibition at the Galerie René Drouin in Paris (where she was featured alongside artists like Leonor Fini [1907 – 1996] and Max Ernst [1891 – 1976]), and did not share any art with the public again until the 1950s. Oppenheim then reverted to her ‘original style’ and based her new artworks on old sketches and earlier works and creations. In Basel she became a member of the Grupp 33 and participated in their group shows, for instance in the Kunstmuseum Basel, 1945. Having worked as an art conservator from 1944, Oppenheim kept a studio in Bern, Switzerland since 1954 and lived there permanently from 1967 until her death in 1985.

In the 1960s Oppenheim distanced herself from the Surrealists. She felt she belonged to the post-war generation, which was younger. Oppenheim was notably ‘true to herself’ and undertook novel topics in her work with ‘fresh pictorial language.’ Despite this, Oppenheim never had her own students, but sometimes would mentor younger artists. In 1968 Oppenheim had a solo exhibition at the Galerie Martin Krebs in Bern.

In 1967, the Moderna Museet in Stockholm organized the first major retrospective of her work at a moment that was ripe for the reconsideration of female artists and precedents; the exhibition provided exposure and appreciation for the full scope of Oppenheim’s multifaceted career. In Switzerland, her first retrospective was held at Museum der Stadt, Solothurn (1974), travelling to Kunstmuseum Winterthur and Wilhelm-Lehmbruck Museum, Duisburg, Federal Republic of Germany in 1975. That same year, in an acceptance speech for the City of Basel Art Prize, Oppenheim took issue with the term ‘woman artist’, asking women to utilize their intellect as a creative strength without fear, and advocated for a proposed ‘androgyny of the spirit’ as a necessary condition for art, earning her the admiration of a younger generation. ‘If you speak a new language of your own, that others have yet to learn,’ she also cautioned, ‘you may have to wait a very long time for a positive echo.’

Oppenheim, who died in 1985, has been esteemed as a figure of ‘feminist identification’ for the women’s movement and a role model for younger generations due to her ‘socio-critical and emancipatory attitude.’ Her archive and much of the artworks have been entrusted to institutions in Bern, including the Museum of Fine Arts and the National Library.

In 1996, the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York mounted Oppenheim's first major museum show in the United States at a time when renewed interest in her work, particularly among young artists, had already begun in Europe. In 2013, a comprehensive retrospective of Oppenheim’s work opened at the Martin Gropius-Bau in Berlin, gathering the artist’s paintings, sketches, sculptures, masks, clothing, furniture, and jewelry. Lenders included David Bowie (1947 – 2016), the Swiss retail tycoon and art dealer Ursula Hauser, and the Dutch diamond magnate Sylvio Perlstein. In 2022, the Museum of Modern Art in New York put on a retrospective exhibition that highlighted Oppenheim’s continuous production over her lengthy career.

Provenance

Edward James, West Dean (acquired directly from the artist in circa 1938); his sale, Christie’s, London, 30 March 1981, lot 6.

Private collection, Spain (acquired from the above, and thence by descent).

Christie’s Private Sales, Paris, Images du Labyrinthe. L’Atelier surréaliste – Carte blanche à Audrey Guttman, Selling-exhibition, 12 September – 2 October 2024.

Firestorm Foundation (acquired from the above).

Exhibitions

Julien Levy Gallery, New York, United States of America, Recent Paintings Leonor Fini, February – March 1939, no. 13 (under the title Meret).

Christie’s, Paris, Images du Labyrinthe. L’Atelier surréaliste – Carte blanche à Audrey Guttman, Selling-exhibition, 12 September – 2 October 2024.

Literature

C. Billiers, ‘Leonor Fini, prêtresse du merveilleux’, in Gala, Paris, February 1996, p. 72.

(Ed.) M.A. Caws, Surrealist Painters and Poets, An Anthology, Cambridge, MA, United States of America, 2001, p. 280 (illustrated; under the incorrect title Young Woman Seated).

P. Webb, Leonor Fini, une vie dans l’art. Métamorphoses d’un art, Paris, 2007, pp. 66-70, illustrated p. 70.

P. Webb, Sphinx: The Life and Art of Leonor Fini, New York, 2009, p. 70 (illustrated).

K. Hille, Spiele der Frauen. Künstlerinnen im Surrealismus, 2009, p. 93 (illustrated).

Copyright Firestorm Foundation