Coptic Prince, 1920 - 1924
Weerberg 1900 - 1924 Innsbruck
This little doll, which found its way into the holdings of the Modern Collection through the estate of the artist Wilfried Kirschl, is already 100 years old. Everything about it seems fragile, not only because of its age, but also because of the almost immaterial design of the figure, which consists mainly of wires, (presumably) parts of a fabric-covered power cable and a translucent woven fabric draped over it. The head is made of dark-coloured wax, the facial features are suggested like a mask. Despite her uniform incorporeality, she radiates a strong dynamic; the s-shaped curved body, the mask-like face and the shapeless floor-length garment are reminiscent of photographic images of expressive dancers from the early 20th century. Every movement causes the delicate construction to wobble. The fact that the doll has survived for so long is almost a miracle and speaks of the great esteem in which it and the artist who created it were held. Gunda Maria Wiese (real name Maria Schumlitz) had been the partner of painter Artur Nikodem, 30 years her senior, since 1921, whom she had met at an exhibition opening in 1920.1 In her very short life of just 24 years, a third of which she spent suffering from tuberculosis, she had no opportunity to make a public appearance as an artist. It was not until the year after her death that the Kunstsalon Unterberger in Innsbruck exhibited works from her artistic estate, presumably at the instigation of Artur Nikodem.2 Nevertheless, she was apparently so well connected in the local art world that an emotional obituary was printed in the theatre/music/art section of the "Innsbrucker Nachrichten" newspaper a few days after her death, paying tribute to her and her artworks.3 One aspect that is repeatedly emphasised in the few written sources on Gunda Maria Wiese is the supposed closeness between her artworks and her personality, such as in a text by Hans Tabarelli: "In the past, when she was still healthy, she used her fine, white fingers to form all kinds of wax dolls, dancers, little goddesses or Madonnas. She was a patient and docile model that her grey-haired friend [Arthur Nikodem] drew and painted hundreds of times, while she recreated herself in miniature." 4 The artist is consistently described as a quiet, calm person, artistically talented, but very limited by her chronic lung disease. In the same text, Hans Tabarelli has the artist Artur Nikodem repeat that Gunda Maria Wiese repeatedly immortalised herself in her works. A very masculine view of female artistic creation, which assumes that in the oh-so-fragile bodies of women, especially in Gunda Maria's, marked by illness, there can be no capacity for the "heroic struggle with a better, more masculine matter", as it is formulated in the obituary.5 The elevation of a female artist to an ethereal being far removed from the world, in which eternity is recognisable, can also be found in male descriptions of other female artists at the same time. In 1918, for example, an author named Fritzchen compared the dancer Grethe Wiesenthal to a "little dust from one of the thousand suns that chase through space in a radiant glow."6 There is no doubt that Gunda Maria Wiese chose fragile, delicate materials to create her small-format artworks, and the comparison between her own fragility and the dolls suggests itself to the viewer. But was the choice of material really a choice of necessity? Holding a paintbrush would certainly not have cost her any more energy than bending wire and moulding wax. Obviously, however, she was better able to express what she wanted to depict with her handicraft work.