Aline Fruhauf Self-Portrait

Known for her biting caricatures, Aline Fruhauf was equally incisive when she depicted herself. These two prints were created at the beginning of her career in New York City in the 1930s, when she was drawing celebrities from the worlds of theater, art, music, and other forms of entertainment. The image from 1931 is only slightly exagger- ated and depicts Fruhauf seated in front of her own caricature of Leonardo da Vinci’s Mona Lisa, which hangs on the back wall. It presents a sympathetic image of an artist at home. But in the 1933 work, she has unleashed her vision and wit on herself. Fruhauf wrote about the process, noting that her nose was prominent and bulbous at the end, that she made her mouth even smaller than it was, and that she created for herself an impossibly long neck. The result, an artist poised at her drawing board, perusing her own image, is as exaggerated and unruly as her published caricatures of the famous faces of the day.

Conocida por sus caricaturas mordaces, Aline Fruhauf era igualmente incisiva cuando se retrataba a sí misma. Estos dos grabados datan de principios de su carrera en Nueva York, en los años treinta, cuando dibujaba a celebridades del teatro, el arte, la música y otras ramas del entretenimiento. La imagen de 1931 está apenas exagerada y muestra a Fruhauf sentada frente a su propia cari- catura de la Mona Lisa de Da Vinci, colgada en la pared del fondo. Es una imagen benévola de la artista en su hogar. Sin embargo, en la imagen de 1933 Fruhauf vuelca sobre sí misma su visión y humor cortante. Fruhauf escribió acerca del proceso, comentando que la nariz era prominente y de punta bulbosa, que había pintado la boca más pequeña de lo que era y que se había dado un cuello larguísimo. El resultado, una artista sentada frente a la mesa de dibujo anali- zando su propia imagen, es tan exagerado y travieso como las caricaturas de celebridades que ella solía publicar.