Female Head

In 1903 a woman in Bavaria who wanted to train as a painter could not simply enrol at the Munich Academy. It took only men, and went on doing so until 1920. Women paid for private lessons instead, and one of the best-known private schools was the one Hölzel ran in the village of Dachau, outside Munich. Most of his pupils there were women, among them the young Ida Kerkovius, who arrived that same year.

The Belvedere does not name the woman in this head. Her body is turned away and she looks back at us, her forehead caught by a hard light. The jacket is dark green with small yellow buttons, and the rust-red ground is brushed in broadly around her. In that red, beside her head, Hölzel painted his monogram and the year, A.H. 03.