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Aline Fruhauf, 1907-1978
Known for her biting caricatures, Aline Fruhauf was equally incisive when she depicted herself. These two prints were created at the beginning of her career in New York City in the 1930s, when she was drawing celebrities from the worlds of theater, art, music, and other forms of entertainment. The image from 1931 is only slightly exagger- ated and depicts Fruhauf seated in front of her own caricature of Leonardo da Vinci's Mona Lisa, which hangs on the back wall. It presents a sympathetic image of an artist at home. But in the 1933 work, she has unleashed her vision and wit on herself. Fruhauf wrote about the process, noting that her nose was prominent and bulbous at the end, that she made her mouth even smaller than it was, and that she created for herself an impossibly long neck. The result, an artist poised at her drawing board, perusing her own image, is as exaggerated and unruly as her published caricatures of the famous faces of the day. |