FEMALE PORTRAITS

Artistic rep­re­sen­ta­ti­ons of women are among the oldest art­works of man­kind. Star­ting from the idea of female beings as deli­ve­r­ing women, the first artists crea­ted small sculp­tures of fer­ti­lity god­des­ses, which ser­ved cul­tic pur­po­ses and the­re­fore inten­ded no por­trait simi­la­ri­ties. First in the Egyp­tian, then in the Greek and Roman art, it came to the rep­re­sen­ta­tion of the indi­vi­dual, but mostly as an idea­li­zed por­trait. An incre­a­sing natu­ra­lism can be obser­ved in the modern period from the 15th cen­tury in Ita­lian and Dutch sculp­ture and pain­ting. From now, female por­trayed acqui­red pre­do­mi­nantly wort­hi­ness of depic­tion as mem­bers of the nobi­lity or a ruling house, as saints or as wives of the moneyed bour­geoi­sie. With the emer­gence of a spe­ci­fi­cally female bour­geois cul­ture in the 18th cen­tury, which was reflec­ted eg. in salons in France and Ger­many, the por­traits of women in pain­ting and pho­to­gra­phy wit­ness for the first time to a psy­cho­lo­gi­zing pene­tra­tion that depicts indi­vi­dual men­ta­lity and com­plex cha­rac­ter traits.
Stan­ding in this tra­di­tion, this exhi­bi­tion pres­ents 17 photo por­traits of female models, taken by 11 inter­na­tio­nal artists, such as Ric­cardo Ban­diera, Tadao Cern, Stef­fen Galan, Loreen Hinz, Josef Karl, Giu­seppe Lo Schiavo, Alexa Meade, Ina Otzko, Mag­da­lena Wos­inska und Laura Zalenga. Very dif­fe­rent dis­play modes are used accor­ding to the inten­ded image state­ment: The spec­trum ran­ges from fashion-conscious and model-like, pro­vo­ca­tive, body-conscious, melan­cho­lic, roman­tic and anxious to rela­xed, hyp­no­tic and the sta­ging as Old Dutch or Renais­sance por­trait. At the same time, these pho­to­gra­phic works reflect the nume­rous pos­si­bi­li­ties of today’s artistic por­trait pho­to­gra­phy to approach the sub­ject of the femi­nine beyond a docu­men­tary por­trait cap­ture, wit­hout the­reby beco­m­ing stereotyped.