The second installment of Femme paintings by Gerda Neubacher. Bringing a whole new approach to an old tradition, her portraiture project Femme literally fixes a mic on the customarily silent muse. Over 30 of Canada's most intriguing and accomplished women spoke and Neubacher listened.
The collaborative portrait project by Gerda Neubacher
From boudoir to boardroom FEMME celebrates some of Toronto’s most intriguing and accomplished women.
Toronto (24 October 2004) – Gallery Neubacher announced today the opening of the second installment of FEMME paintings by internationally renowned artist Gerda Neubacher. Bringing a whole new approach to an old tradition, Neubacher’s portraiture project FEMME literally fixes a mic on the customarily silent muse. Over 30 of Canada’s most intriguing and accomplished women spoke and Neubacher listened. Sensing clandestine hopes from bashful mumblings, the simple act of two women talking yields something fresh and honest—the collaborative portrait.
Starting with a videotaped interview, the women become vocal participants in what the artist sees, and directly influence this exploration into how women see themselves. These extraordinary portraits capture, with brilliant color and incisive line, the psyches of her sitters. Each woman has a unique story sometimes contradictory to her social persona. Pamela Wallin, Veronica Tennant , The RT. Hon Kim Campbell, Dianne Schwalm, and Antonine Maillet are just five of the women captured with wit and intense insight in Neubacher’s powerful and personal show.
By capturing the unique perspectives of this highly successful group of women, the Neubacher gives powerful insight into the ways women manage to “make it†on their own terms. These ravishing portraits capture the intelligence, high spirit, strong will, and intense personal motivation of women who have defined victory for themselves.
Her portraits of women reveal aspects of women's lives and experiences obscured in Western art history, which represents women primarily as saints, Madonnas, and idealized nudes. Neubacher’s images of women instead reveal the often-invisible constellation of feelings and issues that have historically preoccupied women's lives. She is creating the context for how women become human in art.
From boudoir to boardroom, the resulting images charm and provoke both intimacy and revelation. Reinvigorating the practice of portraiture, as well as challenging presumptions on the passive subject, Neubacher achieves a rare, wondrous symbiosis between art and life, women and representation.
About Gerda Neubacher:
Gerda Neubacher’s remarkable career has spanned over 30 years in Canada, Europe and the United States. In addition to a multitude of commissions by private and corporate clients and a busy exhibition schedule across Canada and Europe, Gerda illustrated over ten children’s books, two of which were awarded the prestigious Golden Book Award.
As with FEMME, Gerda continues to explore a concept that has become the foundation for her career: fascination with women and society’s desire for constant beauty. Not only is there a harmony to the female form that is evident in the majority of her work, each piece challenges and re-invents the common perception of the woman as self and the universal strength of the gender.
RSVP Reception - Media and VIP: 7 p.m. Friday, November 5th, 2004
Show Dates: November 5 – November 27, 2004
In the image 'Barbara Stuart-Peterson', Year 2003, Tempra on Linen.
About Gallery Neubacher:
Gallery Neubacher promises to introduce and contribute to the development of emerging artists as well as showcase the talents of more established contemporary artists working in all media. Gallery Neubacher is located within a stone's throw of Toronto's celebrated Yorkville gallery district.
Gallery Neubacher
81 St. Nicolas Street
Toronto