Jeanne Mammen (1890-1976) - Best Seife

circa 1925-1929
charcoal and watercolor mixed media
signed lower right "J.MAMMEN"

Jeanne Mammen (1890-1976) was a German painter and designer. Her works are part of the era of New Objectivity and Symbolism.
In 1927 her paintings and drawings fill the covers and pages of a multitude of newspapers, magazines and satirical journals such as "Jugend", "Die Dame", "Die Schöne Frau", "Der Junggeselle", "Simplicissimus", "Uhu and “Ulk”.
These illustrations depict with a critical eye the shortcomings of Berlin society where bourgeois men, socialites and lesbians rub shoulders.
Our composition is the perfect demonstration because in this tumult, and this extravagance we feel the sarcasm of the artist who denounces the futility of the modern world.
The Bourgeois men who are comfortably installed on their seats of their cars accompanied by young women are the subject of an incisive caricature; just like the male character in the foreground pinching the buttocks of one of these two companions.
Could it be the eye of an avant-garde feminist artist who denounces a male chauvinism still well anchored in this ambiguous society of the 1920s in which women try to emancipate themselves ?