Meret Oppenheim

For Karoline from Günderode

1983

A pale light glows on the left edge of the picture, otherworldly, barely tangible. In front of it: geometric planes in pink and blue, cool and clear. Beneath them, a dark, boat-like shape that seems to sink into the mist. The mood is still and remote. In 1983, the epistolary novel ‘Die Günderode’ by Bettina von Arnim inspired Meret Oppenheim to paint this picture. It is dedicated to Karoline von Günderode, a Romantic poet who took her own life in 1806 at the age of twenty-six. Oppenheim describes how she painted the picture ‘as a response to the mood that streamed toward me from Günderode’s poems’ – and in particular to ‘that otherworldly light that glows behind the world of shadows in the background’. She interprets the geometric planes as fragments of space: ‘with the first, I was reminded of marble, classical columns, antique pink marble’. For her, blue and pink are colours that speak from Günderode’s poems, colours of a world ‘peopled by classical, Greek themes’. It is one of Oppenheim’s last works. On 15 November 1985, she dies in Basel – one day after the launch of her book ‘Caroline’, which contains poems and etchings dedicated to this very poet. Translation generated using AI

oil on textile support [linen/hemp]; original frame

98,0 × 130,9 cm (Image)

Kunstmuseum Bern, Legat Meret Oppenheim