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Oil on canvas, self-portrait. Signed and attr. Marianne von Werefkin (Russian, 1860–1938, Tula, Russia, based in Munich, Geneva and Ascona). 19.5 x 15.5 inch (49.5 x 39.5 cm). The bold self-portrait of Marianne Werefkin at 50 is a favorite cover choice for books about women painters, with its red, passionately glowing eyes, its proud gaze, and its “unnatural colors and whirling brushstrokes.” It took a long time for women artists to win admission to their profession, and the revolutionary Werefkin embodies and depicts this breakthrough more triumphantly and convincingly that almost any other. Her self-portrait reflects “the personal dramatic self-image of Werefkin” (Mangold) and thus appears quite the opposite of what was expected of a lady. Werefkin was ahead of her time not only as an artist and a theoretician of art, but also as a woman – but only after she had first carried the “feminine” ideal of self-sacrifice and renunciation to an extreme hard for us to understand today, and then overcome it. PROVENANCE: Private collection (Europe)