Long waiting for an echo: Meret Oppenheim’s path to becoming an established artist
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For a long time Meret Oppenheim was only perceived as a muse and model. Then she frees herself from constraints and duties and finds great resonance for her own art.
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Meret Oppenheim in 1972 at the opening of her exhibition in Duisburg with the “Fur Cup” from 1936.
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Meret Elisabeth Oppenheim was born on October 6, 1913 as the daughter of a German-Jewish doctor in Berlin. She spends the war years with her mother in Delémont, where Wenger’s grandparents run a knife factory. She is brought up as a Protestant. After the war, the parents move to Steinen im Wiesental, where the father runs a practice. Meret is also often in Ticino, in Carona near Lugano, where Wenger’s grandparents own a large house. Here she comes into contact with artists; her aunt is even briefly married to Hermann Hesse. Grandmother Lisa Wenger is an important role model: she attended the art academy in Düsseldorf, is a painter, author and committed women’s rights activist.
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