Martha Jungwirth Die Mätresse Baudelaires, 2021

Martha Jungwirth has forged a singular approach to abstraction, grounded in her body and perceptions of the world around her. She draws upon ‘pretexts’ which become the triggers for fleeting, internal impulses that are recorded in paint. In Die Mätresse Baudelaires (2021), she references Édouard Manet’s 1862 painting of Jeanne Duval, known as Lady with a Fan or La Maîtresse de Baudelaire. The actress’s relationship with the French poet Charles Baudelaire was immortalised in his poetry collection Les Fleurs du mal (1857). 

The shape of Duval’s enormous crinoline is hinted at by Jungwirth, but only as an abstracted, gestural form. Her painting process is a direct rhythm involving the body, with finger marks and scratches remaining as a visceral record of her presence in the work. In her own words, these are ‘colourful streaks and blotches in tangled relation, swiftly spontaneous, blindly immeasurable, an irreproducible space for action’. A forthcoming exhibition of Martha Jungwirth’s work will be shown at our Paris Marais gallery in Autumn 2021.