Rita Kernn-Larsen

Self-Portrait (Know Thyself)

1937

Peggy Guggenheim included this work by Danish artist Rita Kernn-Larsen in her first Surrealist exhibition organized at her London gallery, Guggenheim Jeune, in 1938. A self-portrait, tellingly titled Know Thyself, it features an automatic line developed from the artist’s own features, and merges images arising from the unconscious, combining both memory and dream. It references the myth of the femme-arbre (woman-tree) by depicting metamorphic leaves of a tree branch transforming into female lips.

On view

Artist Rita Kernn-Larsen
Date 1937
Medium Oil on canvas
Dimensions 40 x 45 cm
Credit line Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation, New York. Purchased with funds contributed by Penny Borda, Lewis and Laura Kruger, and the Guggenheim Circle, 2013
Accession 2013.41
Collection Acquisitions
Type Painting

Copy caption

On view


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Mirko Basaldella

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Not on View