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Bust of a Woman

Luna Drexler

Basic information
ID
С-I-402
Author
Luna Drexler
Name
Bust of a Woman
Date of creation
1907
Country
Austro-Hungarian Empire
Culture
Contemporary times
Technique
moulding polychrome
Material
plaster polychrome vernix
Dimensions (height x width x depth, cm)
54 x 45 x 26
Additionally
Type
sculpture 3D
Genre
portraiture
Plot
Portrait bust
Provenance
Collection of Leon Pininski State Collection of Art in Warsaw (branch in Lviv)
Information about author
Author
Luna Drexler
Artist's lifetime
1882–1933
Country
Austro-Hungarian Empire, Poland, France
Biography
The artist came from the family of Ignacy Drexler, a Lviv merchant who owned a textile shop in Kapitulna Square. He was known for his artistic talent and for encouraging children's involvement in the arts. Up to the age of 17, Luna was fond of music and later became interested in painting and sculpture. In 1899, she entered the private art school of Marceli Harasimowicz in Lviv, where she studied under the portrait painter and illustrator Stanislaw Reichan (from 1899), a member of a famous Lviv family of artists and a graduate of the Vienna Academy of Arts. She improved her skills by taking lessons from Stanislaw Batowski-Kaczor and the sculptor Antoni Popiel. At the same time, the future artist attended the public drawing and modelling studio of the Lviv Art and Industrial School. She improved her skills at the Adrian Baraniecki Higher Women's Courses in Krakow for some time. In 1907, Luna Drexler studied in Paris at the Académie de la Grande Chaumière under Jean-Antoine Injalbert and the famous sculptor Antoine Bourdelle. She was fascinated by the work of Auguste Rodin, whose symbolic Impressionist style is reflected in a number of her works. In 1908, the artist returned to Lviv and took over the former studio of the Lviv sculptor Tadeusz Baracz, who had died in 1905. In the same year, the first personal exhibition of Luna Drexler was held in the exhibition hall of the Society of Friends of Fine Arts (Towarzystwo przyjaćół sztuk Pięknych), which included more than twenty works.
The collection of European artistic experience continued in 1909: in Paris under Antoine Bourdelle, in Rome – at the Medici Academy, and from 1910 – at the Munich Academy of Fine Arts. The ideological foundations of Luna Drexler's work were formed by her acquaintance with the philosopher, writer, architect and sculptor Rudolf Steiner, who founded the Anthroposophical Society in Dornach (Switzerland). During her stay abroad, the artist was involved in the exhibition life of Eastern Galicia. Between 1911 and 1914, she collaborated with Oleksandr Levytskyi's faience factory in the village of Patsykiv near Stanislav (now Pidlissia, Ivano-Frankivsk region). In 1917, the artist returned to Lviv and settled first in house No. 30 on St. Sofiia Street (now - 114 Franko Street), then at 14 Parkova Street (1910, architect Ivan Levynskyi), where she lived until the end of her life. The creative heritage of Luna Drexler consists of more than 200 sculptures and several dozen paintings. Until the early 1910s, her creative work was dominated by the inspirations of Impressionism, Symbolism, and Secession. Later, she was inspired by the cultures of ancient Egypt and Assyria and ancient Greek and medieval French sculptures, which led to an archaic stylisation. Influenced by the ideas of Rudolf Steiner, the ideological core of the artist's figurative and plastic explorations was the revelation of human spiritual principles through artistic means. In line with the fine arts of the early twentieth century, Luna Drexler sought to integrate painterly means of artistic expression into sculpture, which is confirmed by the texture of the surfaces, polychrome colouring, and soft modelling of forms. The artist's painting legacy is made up of landscapes and portraits. It is known that the artist was also interested in graphic art, significantly etching. Drexler's establishment in the socio-cultural space of the twentieth century is confirmed by her active public activity, participation in the founding of the Union of Polish Artists, membership in the Sculpture Association, as well as membership in the Board of the Union of Polish Artists and the Lviv City Council for the Arts.
Luna Drexler died in Lviv at age 51 and was buried in the Lychakiv cemetery. For the construction of the artist's tombstone, one of the reliefs of her 1927 work "Dedication" (a flying angel, reproduced with a cross and seven roses in his hands) was used, which was cast in bronze and installed on the grave in a black marble frame. A posthumous exhibition of Luna Amalia Drexler's work was held in May–July 1937, featuring 189 works, including 126 sculptures and 63 oil and watercolour paintings.
Object description
"Bust of a Woman" is one of the many female images in Luna Amalia Drexler's work, which combines refinement and conformity with inner strength, self-sufficiency, and self-confidence. The worldview and ideological basis of the portrait was the affirmation of women as full-fledged subjects of social and cultural life, characteristic of the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries, which was reflected institutionally in the feminist movement, including in Eastern Galicia. Feminism manifested itself in various ways, including the organisation of cultural and charitable associations, creative unions and specialised publications, aiming to establish women as a full-fledged subject of action, thought, will, and creativity. The early 1890s saw the emergence of a movement for the extension of women's educational rights, one of the achievements of which was the admission of women to universities as "extraordinary attendees" (from 1897). On 20 June 1906, the first Ukrainian girls' gymnasium of the classical type of the Basilian Sisters was opened in Lviv and operated until 1939. Its pedagogical concept was characterised by the development of emancipation ideas and the motivation of women to improve their educational level further. The development of feminism in Galicia was evidenced by women's participation in the region's political life: in electoral campaigns and in the activities of local authorities. A specific feature of the Galician women's movement was its differentiation into national branches, which interacted in the cultural field. The peculiarity of the figurative solution of "Bust of a Woman", inspired by the feminist worldview, is the reflection of the intellectual type, the movement of thought, inner consolidation, and intense spiritual life. What attracts attention is the revealing of the distinctive, essential through momentary facial expressions, a glance of the eyes, and a turn of the head. The representation is characterised by "communicativeness", modelling the situation of an imaginary dialogue involving a potential interlocutor-viewer in the semantic and emotional space of the work. It is interesting to see the nuances of the subject's character and emotional state in a round view of the work. The portrait belongs to the early period of Luna Amalia Drexler's work, as evidenced by the Secessionist and Impressionist styles, the former reflected in the whimsical silhouette and hairstyle, the latter in the free sketch-like modelling of the outfit and the shimmering play of light and shadow. The artist's inherent synthesis of sculptural and painterly means of expression is evident in the cool green tint of the elements of the sculptural forms. The image features combine sophisticated stylisation, decorativeness, and the age and physiognomic authenticity of the person portrayed.
Inscriptions
Signature and date: "DREXLERÓWNA / 07 II"; sticker on the back: "4173".
Legal regulation
Borys Voznytskyi Lviv National Art Gallery

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