Meret Oppenheim forged ties to Surrealism when she moved from Switzerland to Paris in 1932 while still in her teens. Though she was one of the few women artists to be immediately welcomed by the movement, Oppenheim thought of Surrealism as ideologically permeable and pursued many avenues of experimentation, exploring dreams, humour, death, womanhood, and nature. In 1936, Oppenheim opened her first solo exhibition at Galerie Marguerite Schulthess in Basel, where she presented Ma gouvernante (1936): two white high-heeled shoes, trussed like a roast chicken and placed bottom-up on a platter. This small sculpture – which like the fur-covered teacup Déjeuner en fourrure (1936), is one of the artist’s earliest and best-known works –, was a perfect indication of the path Oppenheim would follow. The print Der Spiegel der Genoveva (1967), for example, shows the strange metamorphosis of a full-lipped, clearly female figure who seems to be changing into an animal, perhaps a cow. This effect is obtained by combining the woman’s face with a long, hairy leg that serves as a neck, but ends in a hoof. The work hinges on a disquieting image and shows how any material, when taken out of its original context, can acquire a new symbolic status.
Stefano Mudu
