Catching Elephant is a theme by Andy Taylor
100 years ago today, Marie Curie won her second Nobel Prize, radically changing the paradigm for women in science – celebrate with her inspiring story told in vintage cyanotype
I just found this via so30s:
Helle Nice, born Helene Delangle, made her way to Paris in the 1920s, and worked as a ballerina, nude model and cabaret dancer. After an injury ended her dance career, she began racing cars, and after being introduced to Ettore Bugatti by Philippe de Rothschild, she drove for Bugatti on the European Grand Prix circuit in the 1930s.
A horrific crash and the onset of WWII sidelined her career, and accusations after the war (though unproven) that she worked with the Gestapo isolated her from the racing community as former friends and colleagues shunned her. She died in Nice in 1984, living in poverty and obscurity. A sad end to a glamorous life.
submitted by jwstudio,thanks;]
Gerda Taro (1910 - 1937)
Ever since I read the story of Gerda Taro for the first time, I was touched. She was the first female photojournalist, who covered the front lines of a war. In 1936, at the age of 26, she accompanied her companion and colleague Robert Capa to Barcelona, to cover the events of the Spanish Civil War.
There she turned down a marriage proposal by Capa, started to work independently from him under the label “Photo Taro” and connected with the likes of Ernest Hemingway, George Orwell and other european anti facist intellectuals, who rallied for the Spanish Republic.
There was a huge demand for her photographs throughout the European and American press. Unfortunately she found a very early death in 1937, when she was hit by an Republican Truck. I wonder what a great corpus of work we would be able to look on, had she lived longer.
You can find quite a selection of pictures of and works by several women of the Bauhaus on MONDOBLOGO.
Charlotte Perriand (1903–1999)
(Charlotte Perriand in her studio in Montparnasse, ca. 1934, Photo: Pierre Jeanneret)
Legend has it, that at the age of 24 Charlotte Perriand walked into Le Corbusier’s studio in Paris and asked him to employ her as a furniture designer. All he had to say to her was: “We don’t embroider cushions here”. Nowadays his answer would be considered as simply sexist and rude, but in the late 1920s a statement like this probably was a daily occurrence. Anyhow, a few months later, after having been taken to see the Bar sous le Toît, an ensemble Charlotte Perriand had created for the Salon d’Áutomne in 1927, by his Cousin Pierre Jeanneret, Le Corbusier apologized and invited her to join his studio. A ten year collaboration followed. But this was only the start of a career that would turn her into one of the most influential figures of the modern movement. After leaving the workshop of Le Corbusier and Pierre Jeanneret she turned away from the steel and glass towards more traditional materials like wood, aiming for more affordable, functional, mass-manufactured furniture. In 1947 she collaborated with Le Corbusier in developing the Unité d’Habitation in Marseilles, a project setting out counteract the housing shortage after the Second World War. She undertook travels to the Far East and worked in Brazil. Other collaborators were Fernand Léger, Lucio Costa and Erno Goldfinger.
(Charlotte Perriand on the B306 Chaise Longue, 1928)
“… after all, design is about responding to the gestures of the human being. Then there is a side even beyond this, which has to do with a sort of harmony with oneself, with one’s environment; this kind of awareness affects everything.”
(Charlotte Perriand on board the ship Aventure, August 15th 1938. Photo: Paul Gutmann)
“There is one thing I never did, and that was flirt. That is, I didn’t “dabble,” I created and produced, and my job was important. There was mutual respect, mutual recognition.”
(Student Room, Cité University in Paris 1952)
“The only advice I would give would be to stay within the reality of things, that is, the execution, the concrete. And then, she would have to make herself known, produce little things, show them, etc.”
(Charlotte Perriand Chair, Unité d’Habitation, Marseille, Photo: Lucien Hervé)
Read more about Charlotte Perriand. All quotes are taken from an Interview between Hendel Teicher and Charlotte Perriand published in ArtForum in summer 1999.
It’s about the girls…
(Bauhaus women - via qubik)
Everyone is going on about male artists, photographers, designers, architects like Walter Gropius, Le Corbuiser, Dieter Rams, etc. You name them. But what about the women? They were not absent, not at all. This is a place for them.
The name for this blog was inspired by Roxana Altamirano’s wonderful blog nerdboyfriend, which is cherished and loved on my side.
If you have any questions, submissions or hints for me, please write to: nrdgrlfrnd@gmail.com.
Let’s go!
