Combining archive material with a wide selection of photographs of
body paintings produced by the duo in the 1970-1980s, this publication
retraces the evolution of gender identities and the treatment of the
female body in visual culture from the 1950s to the present.
Vera Lehndorff and Holger Trülzsch developed an œuvre of remarkably
innovative staged photographs of body paintings—a synthesis of painting,
photography and performance—during an intensive creative period from the
1970s to the late 1980s. In Body of Work – Behind the Appearances,
Lehndorff/Trülzsch approach their artistic work from a new angle by
interweaving the images of the work series, the facsimiled archive
material (such as essays by Susan Sontag and Gary Indiana), as
well as contextual explanations and reference images. The book retraces
the evolution of gender identities and the treatment of the female body
against the backdrop of pop culture, media and art trends from the second
half of the 20th century to the present.
Vera Lehndorff (born 1939 in Kaliningrad, Russia, lives and works in
Berlin) studied painting
and design at the
Fachschule für Gestaltung in Hamburg from 1958 to 1961. In 1961 she moved
to Florence. Lehndorff's modeling career began there. She made her
international breakthrough in 1966 in Michelangelo Antonioni's cult film Blow-up,
after which Veruschka, as she came to be known professionally, became a
1960s fashion icon. During
the 1968 shoot in Rome for Franco Rubartelli's film Veruschka, poesia
di una donna (1971), she experimented with body-painting,
progressively transforming her appearance in her own artworks as well as
in collaboration with Holger
Trülzsch, whom she met in 1969.
Holger Trülzsch (born 1939 in Munich, lives and works in Berlin) studied
painting and sculpture at
the Academy of Fine Arts in Munich from 1960 to 1965. Trülzsch works in a
wide array of different media, ranging from painting, drawing,
photography and film
to sculptures. Also an accomplished percussionist, Trülzsch teamed up with
Florian Fricke to form the electronic
music group Popul Vuh. They composed and performed the soundtrack to
Werner Herzog's Aguirre, the Wrath of God (1972), and recorded
their first album, Affenstunde, in 1969 in Peterskirchen,
Bavaria, where he first met Vera Lehndorff.
