Maud Arizona

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Maud Arizona, 1919

Maud Arizona (* 1888 as Genevieve White , married. Forst , probably in Löchau (Lachov) / District Braunau (Kingdom of Bohemia) , † 1963 ) was during the 1920s, a well-known circus woman who by her stage name Maud Arizona as "Tattooed Lady" appeared and was the model for several works by Otto Dix .

Life

Genovefa Weisser moved to Vienna as a young woman and initially worked as a housemaid (domestic servant). There she met her future husband, Siegmund Forst, who was a Jewish believer, with whom she went to Berlin in 1912 and later to Dortmund. While her husband was serving as a soldier in Montenegro during World War I , she made the acquaintance of the Dortmund showman and tattoo artist Kurt (or Rudolf) Schulz.

Genovefa became a member of his troupe and had him tattoo all over his body with ornaments, biblical motifs and drawings . The colored tattoos were connected by ivy tendrils. There was a naked figure on the chest, possibly an angel. On their stomach was a couple seated at a table, on their arms were portraits, figures or small scenes, and above all tendrils. On the right thigh were a tree, a rider, a man with a cane, on the left thigh a star, a woman with a toddler and the typical tendrils.

She appeared at circus performances, sideshows and in Schulz ' Varieté performances, who knew how to stage and market her perfectly. She was a celebrity around 1920 under the name Maud Arizona . In 1922 appearances by her in the Nouveau Cirque de Paris in the Rue Saint-Honoré are documented. Around 1924 she toured Argentina with the Sarrasani Circus , without Schulz. The nickname "Suleika, the tattooed miracle" should additionally emphasize her charms. She also printed advertising postcards, so-called souvenir cards. Several photos of her are in the “Heidelberg Collection” of the dermatologist Walther Schönfeld , one of the most important on the subject of tattoos in the German-speaking world. Genovefa and Schulz were also personally acquainted with him. From Schönfeld's written remarks it emerges that Genovefa also traveled with a tattooed showman named Rustahn or Rouston (Raimund Rolof or Rolof-Ofawa) and appeared with him as alleged siblings.

Later reception

The documentary In Eternal Memory about the life of Genovefa Forst, née Weisser, was shown on November 9, 2013, followed by a panel discussion as part of the 37th Duisburg Film Week . The artist Christian Dünow documented the life of his great-grandmother using family photos and archive material such as Gestapo interrogation protocols. The film was also his thesis for a degree in communications design at the University of Wuppertal . The journalist, editor and curator Cristina Nord found that the film, as a contemporary document, tells "not only of (over) life under National Socialism , but also of extinct forms of entertainment, of freak shows and flea circuses ".

Several photographs of Maud Arizona in a photo album in the Kohrs Collection were part of the Tattoo Legends exhibition . Christian Warlich on St. Pauli in the Museum for Hamburg History (MHG) 2019/2020, curated by Ole Wittmann . One year after the opening of the analog exhibition at the MHG, the digital version was continued from November 2020: in the Christian Warlich show . Digital Exhibit Pt II focuses on individual objects.

Representation in art

She met the German expressionist Otto Dix under her stage name Maud Arizona. It is unclear whether he met her with Otto Griebel while visiting a beer bar in Düsseldorf, the Busch circus in Hamburg or the Sarrasani circus in Dresden.

Martha Dix wrote in a letter dated March 31, 1981 that her husband “was very interested in tattoos; he bought a model book with his primitive templates from such a master of his trade. ”The showman, circus wrestler and tattoo artist Karl Finke made his book no. 9 towards the end of the First World War. According to the art historian Eva Karcher, "Suleika is the tattooed lady Maud Arizona ". The art historian Cecilia De Laurentiis explains that Karl Finke's influence on Otto Dix's work can also be seen in the painting The Butcher's Shop. A beef head with two crossed cleavers is tattooed on the arm of one of the butchers shown. This motif can clearly be traced back to a drawing by Finke, which can be found in book No. 9 as well as in book No. 3 finds.

Section “Tattooed Women” in the MHG, 2020

Dix immortalized Maud Arizona in a 1920 oil painting in the pose of ancient Venus. For this picture too he made use of his own means of satire, the grotesque and alienation. Maud Austria is shown standing on a pedestal on a wooden stage. Except for white patent leather shoes with heels and red panties, she is bare, her right hand, raised to her head in a graceful pose, touches the carefully laid water-wave hairstyle . Her tattoos, which are distributed over the legs, the entire torso and arms, are executed with great attention to detail with motifs from the world of sailors and the circus, which, however, do not match those of the real Maud Arizona. Likewise differently, the palms of the hands and the entire neck are covered with tattoos on the painting. In 1921 Dix exhibited the painting in the November Group department at the Great Berlin Art Exhibition . Today the picture is presumably in an Italian private collection, but as a poster in the Museum of Hamburg History it is on the virtual tour of the Christian Warlich exhibition . See Digital Exhibit Pt II .

Dix also presented them in two different versions in a drypoint as Maud Arizona; Suleika depicts the tattooed miracle in his “circus” folder with artist representations from 1922, which was self-published with an edition of 50 copies. The composition is similar to that of the painting, but the pedestal is missing and the female figure seems to fixate the viewer. The etchings are represented in several important public collections, such as the Museum of Modern Art in Manhattan, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art , the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts , the Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes in Chile, the Museum Kunstpalast in Düsseldorf, the Städtischen Galerie Dresden or the Museum Gunzenhauser of the Chemnitz art collections . In 1966/1967, on the occasion of the exhibition in the Albertinum on Dix's 75th birthday, a graphic was exhibited in the Kupferstich-Kabinett of the Staatliche Kunstsammlungen Dresden . In 2018/2019 an etching was on view in the Berlinische Galerie .

literature

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b Christian Dünow: For eternal memory . Script for the diploma thesis, documentary film 2013, 26 min., On the biography of Genovefa Forst, Christian Dünow's great-grandmother.
  2. ↑ a b c Igor Eberhard: Tattooed curiosities, obscenities, clinical pictures? The Heidelberg Collection Walther Schönfeld with special consideration of tattoos and their tattoo narratives . Volume 1 v. 2, University of Vienna, 2015, p. 466
  3. ↑ Igor Eberhard: Tattooed curiosities, obscenities, clinical pictures? The Heidelberg Collection Walther Schönfeld with special consideration of tattoos and their tattoo narratives . Volume 1 v. 2, University of Vienna, 2015, see footnote 127, p. 159
  4. ↑ a b Nadine Voß: In the eternal memory of Christian Dünow DE 2013 | 23 min. In: Protocult. Duisburg minutes of November 9, 2013. Retrieved April 24, 2021
  5. ↑ Adolf Spamer : The tattoo in the German port cities. G. Winters Buchhandlung, Bremen 1934, p. 35
  6. ↑ a b c d Kunkel Fine Art: Maud Arizona (Suleika, the tattooed wonder). Retrieved April 23, 2021
  7. ↑ a b c Christa Sigg: The painter and the tattooed Venus from the vaudeville . In: Augsburger Allgemeine of July 9, 2020. Retrieved April 23, 2021
  8. ↑ Igor Eberhard: Tattooed curiosities, obscenities, clinical pictures? The Heidelberg Collection Walther Schönfeld with special consideration of tattoos and their tattoo narratives . Volume 1 v. 2, University of Vienna, 2015, pp. 159, 440, 467
  9. ↑ Igor Eberhard: Tattooed curiosities, obscenities, clinical pictures? The Heidelberg Collection Walther Schönfeld with special consideration of tattoos and their tattoo narratives . Volume 1 v. 2, University of Vienna, 2015, pp. 439, 477, 480
  10. ↑ a b 2019/2020: Tattoo legends. Christian Warlich in St. Pauli , Hamburg History Museum , Department Streckenbach - Kohrs - Ulrich , NHS MK-060,104. Private collection Manfred Kohrs Wedemark.
  11. ↑ See Christian Warlich. Digital Exhibit Pt II Retrieved December 2, 2020.
  12. ↑ Jung-Hee Kim: Women pictures by Otto Dix: Reality and self-confession. LIT Verlag Münster 1994, ISBN 9783894739393 p. 31
  13. ↑ Cecilia De Laurentiis: The tattoo artist Karl Finke. In: Ole Wittmann (Ed.): Karl Finke: Book No. 3. A template album by the Hamburg tattooist / A Flash Book by the Hamburg Tattooist. Henstedt-Ulzburg: Warlich estate 2017, ISBN 978-3-000-56648-6 , pp. 131-134.
  14. ↑ Eva Karcher: Eros and death in the work of Otto Dix: Studies on the history of the body in the twenties. LIT Verlag Münster, 1984, ISBN 9783886601042 , pp. 21-27
  15. ↑ a b Janina Nentwig: " Outsider and pioneers". The November Group exhibitions from 1919 to 1932 . In: Novembergruppe 1918 . Publications of the Kurt Weill Society Dessau, Nils Grosch (Ed.), Volume 10, pp. 9, 16
  16. ↑ Texts on the exhibition Freedom. The art of the November group 1918–1935 in the Berlinische Galerie 2018/2019
  17. ↑ Virtual tour of the Christian Warlich exhibition . Digital Exhibit Pt II . in the “Special Exhibitions” room in the Museum of Hamburg History. Accessed on May 1, 2021
  18. ↑ Julia Silverman: Otto Dix - Maud Arizona: Suleika, the tattooed wonder . In: Sang Bleu Magazine January 22, 2014. Retrieved April 23, 2021
  19. ^ Museum of Modern Art: Maud Arizona (Suleika, The Tattooed Wonder) . Retrieved April 23, 2021
  20. ^ Los Angeles County Museum of Art: Maud Arizona; Suleika, the tattooed wonder . Retrieved April 23, 2021
  21. ^ Virginia Museum of Fine Arts: Maud Arizona (Suleika, the tattooed wonder) . Retrieved April 23, 2021
  22. ↑ Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes: Maud Arizona . Retrieved April 26, 2021
  23. ↑ German Digital Library : Portfolio "Circus" - Maud Arizona (Suleika, the tattooed wonder) . Retrieved April 24, 2021
  24. ↑ Bernd Klempnow: Dresden acquires spectacular art collection . In: sächsische.de of August 16, 2019. Retrieved April 23, 2021
  25. ↑ Otto Dix on his 75th birthday. Graphics . Staatliche Kunstsammlungen, Kupferstich-Kabinett (Ed.), Dresden 1966, catalog for the exhibition from November 27, 1966 to February 14, 1967
personal data
SURNAME Arizona, Maud
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Weisser, Genovefa (maiden name); Forst, Genovefa (married name); Suleika (stage name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Austrian, Czechoslovakian showman and variety actress
DATE OF BIRTH 1888
PLACE OF BIRTH uncertain: Löchau (Lachov), Braunau district (Kingdom of Bohemia)
DATE OF DEATH 1963