Mariette Lydis
(Baden 1894 – 1970 Buenos Aires)
“Jeu de Dames” (The game of checkers), signed and dated MARIETTE LYDIS PARIS 1937, titled on old label on the revers, oil on canvas, 100 x 80 cm, framed
Provenance:
Galerie bei der Oper, Vienna
Private Collection, Austria
Exhibition and catalogue:
Vienna, Stadt der Frauen. Künstlerinnen in Wien von 1900–1938, Belvedere Vienna, 25 January – 19 May 2019, ill. p. 252.
This striking work originates from a prominent Austrian private collection specializing in German and Austrian painting of the opening decades of the twentieth century.
Two young women – entirely distinct, yet linked by a mysterious and intense bond – are depicted shortly before playing the checkers (jeu de dames). They appear to invite the viewer, upon whom the striking blue eyes of the blonde girl are fixed. Meanwhile, the black girl – curiously dressed in a traditional Austrian Dirndl – focuses her attention entirely on her partner. The cultural and situational symbolism of this composition is astonishingly multifaceted and, for the period of the painting's creation, entirely unique in this combination.
Born in Baden near Vienna in 1887, the artist’s œuvre is currently undergoing a major rediscovery. Her openly bisexual lifestyle, alongside her complex cultural transitions – from her Jewish heritage, an early marriage and relocation to Athens, to years spent immersed in the Parisian bohemian scene surrounding Tamara de Lempicka, exhibitions in the United States, and her eventual emigration to Argentina – render her work exceptionally compelling to contemporary art history. This magic-realist composition is structured around emphatically contrasting lighting effects, fusing disparate cultural iconographies into a novel, distinctly unsettling artistic statement.
The painting was most recently exhibited in 2019 at the Belvedere museum's exhibition City of Women: Female Artists in Vienna from 1900 to 1938 and was published in the accompanying catalogue.
Peter Assmann
Specialist: Dr. Marianne Hussl-Hörmann
(Baden 1894 – 1970 Buenos Aires)
“Jeu de Dames” (The game of checkers), signed and dated MARIETTE LYDIS PARIS 1937, titled on old label on the revers, oil on canvas, 100 x 80 cm, framed
Provenance:
Galerie bei der Oper, Vienna
Private Collection, Austria
Exhibition and catalogue:
Vienna, Stadt der Frauen. Künstlerinnen in Wien von 1900–1938, Belvedere Vienna, 25 January – 19 May 2019, ill. p. 252.
This striking work originates from a prominent Austrian private collection specializing in German and Austrian painting of the opening decades of the twentieth century.
Two young women – entirely distinct, yet linked by a mysterious and intense bond – are depicted shortly before playing the checkers (jeu de dames). They appear to invite the viewer, upon whom the striking blue eyes of the blonde girl are fixed. Meanwhile, the black girl – curiously dressed in a traditional Austrian Dirndl – focuses her attention entirely on her partner. The cultural and situational symbolism of this composition is astonishingly multifaceted and, for the period of the painting's creation, entirely unique in this combination.
Born in Baden near Vienna in 1887, the artist’s œuvre is currently undergoing a major rediscovery. Her openly bisexual lifestyle, alongside her complex cultural transitions – from her Jewish heritage, an early marriage and relocation to Athens, to years spent immersed in the Parisian bohemian scene surrounding Tamara de Lempicka, exhibitions in the United States, and her eventual emigration to Argentina – render her work exceptionally compelling to contemporary art history. This magic-realist composition is structured around emphatically contrasting lighting effects, fusing disparate cultural iconographies into a novel, distinctly unsettling artistic statement.
The painting was most recently exhibited in 2019 at the Belvedere museum's exhibition City of Women: Female Artists in Vienna from 1900 to 1938 and was published in the accompanying catalogue.
Peter Assmann
Specialist: Dr. Marianne Hussl-Hörmann
