THE UNUSUAL LIFE OF A WOMAN NAME GERDA – The love between a painter and muse that transcends borders sexes

GERDA WEGENER 1/3 – She was born on March day, 1886. She was a Danish fashion illustrator and painter of lesbian erotica in the 1930s, she grew up in Hobro, but she left home at the age of 17 and moved to Copenhagen as a teenager to pursue her artistic interests. She worked as a successful fashion illustrator for magazines, and also painted erotic imagery of women. She married (Gottlieb and Wegener, at the ages of 19 and 22, respectively), fellow artist Einar Wegener, who became Lili Elbe (one of the first-ever documented recipients of sex reassignment surgery).

GERDA WEGENER 2/3 – In 1904, her work was featured in the Charlottenborg Art. This recognition propelled her into the fashion magazine industry where she became a leading illustrator of women’s high fashion in the Art Deco style of the time. Wegener’s fashion industry paintings featured beautiful women dressed in chic attire. When the news broke that Wegener’s paintings of high fashion women were in fact artistic representations of a man, the gender-bending scandal was too much for the small town of Copenhagen. Along with her spouse who was now living as Lili, the pair settled into a lesbian lifestyle in the more open-minded city of Paris in 1912.

GERDA WEGENER 3/3 – With her new life in Paris, she started painting nude women often in sexualized poses. Sometimes described as “lesbian erotica,” these sensual Art Deco style illustrations were published in art books. After separating from Lili Elbe, she married an Italian diplomat, and moved with him to Morocco. However, the marriage was short-lived and the couple divorced in 1936. Her last art exhibition during her lifetime was in Copenhagen in 1939. Wegener died alone soon after in 1940.