22 Facts About Gerda Wegener

Gerda Marie Fredrikke Wegener was a Danish illustrator and painter.

Gerda Wegener employed these works in the styles of Art Nouveau and later Art Deco.

Gerda Wegener's father had Huguenot ancestry and her family was conservative.

Gerda Wegener had three siblings but was the only child to live to adulthood.

Gerda Wegener enjoyed art at a young age and began training.

Gerda Wegener's family moved to Hobro and later she moved to Copenhagen to pursue her education at the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts.

Gerda Wegener's work was often of confident and elegant women performing a variety of activities in either a Renaissance inspired style, Art Nouveau or Art Deco style.

Gerda Wegener did this in small ways, such as drawing men with slender bodies and soft lines, or by painting her transgender partner, Lili Elbe.

Gerda Wegener then was the center of a controversy called the Peasant Painter Dispute after one of her 1906 works, Portrait of Ellen von Kohl, was rejected from the exhibitions of Den frie Udstilling and Charlottenborg due to the style of the piece.

Gerda Wegener did art in Paris, but was less successful in Denmark, where people found her work very different and strange as it often portrayed her husband as a woman.

Gerda Wegener often painted herself with Lili Elbe or Lili alone either portrayed as a man or a woman.

Gerda Wegener's work gained her attention and she was able to throw parties and experience notorious fame.

Gerda Wegener's illustrations were used in a wide range of platforms from beauty advertisements to political anti-German images in the Le Matin and the La Baionnette during World War II.

Gerda Wegener was exhibited in the Salon des Humoristes, the Salon des Independants, and the Salon d'Automne.

Gerda Wegener befriended Ulla Poulsen, a Danish ballerina, who became a frequent model for her paintings.

In 1931, Gerda Wegener married Italian officer, aviator, and diplomat Major Fernando Porta and moved with him to Morocco.

Gerda Wegener divorced him in 1936 and returned to Denmark in 1938 for unknown reasons.

Gerda Wegener held her last exhibition in 1939, but by this time, her artwork was out of style as the simpler Functionalism had become more popular in the 1930s.

Gerda Wegener had no children, lived by herself in relative obscurity, and began to drink heavily.

Gerda Wegener faced financial instability and kept an income by selling hand-painted postcards.

Gerda Wegener died on 28 July 1940, in Frederiksberg, Denmark, shortly after Nazi Germany invaded the country.

Gerda Wegener is portrayed by Swedish actress Alicia Vikander in the 2015 film The Danish Girl, starring British actor Eddie Redmayne as Lili Elbe.