Standing Nude Girl, 1913/14

This subtly and sparingly colored work on paper is one of the few depictions of female nude youths found in the oeuvre of the painter and graphic artist Ludwig Heinrich Jungnickel (1881–1965), who was celebrated primarily on account of his animal paintings. Created in 1913/14, the work clearly shows the influence Expressionist artists, including Oskar Kokoschka (1886–1980), Egon Schiele (1890–1918) and Anton Kolig (1886–1950), exerted on Jungnickel. The choice of motif, too, was directly informed by these artists, seeing as he depicted a girl on the cusp of puberty. Artists of early Austrian Expressionism preferred this ambivalent age at the threshold to adulthood. Unlike Kokoschka and Schiele, who were both interested in the nascent sexuality of adolescents and thus depicted them completely naked, Jungnickel decided to cover the girl’s pubic region with a short skirt. This approach contradicts the other Expressionists’ sexualized gaze and thus reveals Jungnickel’s more measured view on the subject.

MR, 2021