Axell becomes a visual artist
Evelyn Axell was born in 1935 in Namur, Belgium to a traditional catholic family. She attended a catholic school while she was growing up. This upbringing led her to have a lifelong distaste for conservative values and Christian morality. In 1953, Axell moved to Brussels to attend art school. She began her studies in ceramics before switching to acting. Going into the 1960s, Axell was on track for a promising acting career. She had steady work as a Television announcer and would have minor roles in film and theater productions. However, she found the work benign and dissatisfying. In 1964, Axell quit acting, and under the monitorship of Rene Magritte, began painting. She was Fascinated by the pop art scene of New York. She was one of the first European adapters of the style. Her works were often sexual or erotic depicting the nude female form and fantasy. Her early works are done mostly in oil paint, although she wouldn’t limit herself to a singular medium. Axell would explore the style of collage and the medium of enamels as well. It wouldn’t be until 1967 that she developed her signature technique of painting on plexiglass and other plastics.
“Film: Evelyne Axell, Le Crocodile En Peluche.” WIELS, www.wiels.org/en/events/projection-de-film-evelyne-axell-le-crocodile-en.... Accessed 7 Apr. 2024.
“Evelyne Axell.” AWARE Women Artists / Femmes Artistes, awarewomenartists.com/en/artiste/evelyne-axell/. Accessed 7 Apr. 2024.
Tate. “Evelyne Axell.” Tate, www.tate.org.uk/whats-on/tate-modern/world-goes-pop/artist-biography/eve.... Accessed 7 Apr. 2024.
“Evelyne Axell.” Widewalls, www.widewalls.ch/artists/evelyne-axell. Accessed 7 Apr. 2024.
This work is titled Marie-Claire and is a collage made by Evelyne Axell in 1964. The work features a nude faceless woman in a pensive pose. A sheer bra hangs through the center of the work with one end of the garment draped over the woman’s knee. Men’s shoes rise from the bottom border of the work and appear as if they are resting on a coffee table in a living room atop an issue of Marie-Claire. In the background, you see a woman in swimwear from the 1950s. The layers of paint that obscure her make her appear as if she is fading out. Evelyne Axell was a big supporter of the sexual revolution of the 1960s. She didn’t hold onto the idea that sex was only for procreation. She supported women finding fulfillment in their sexualities. Here, the depicted woman is nude maybe she just had sex with the man positioned off canvas, maybe she is a model. Her posture suggests that she is comfortable being naked in this context. Her legs are not crossed for modesty but rather to convey that she is thinking. Notice how one hand rests on her lap and the other strokes her chin like a philosopher lost in thought. Axelle is conveying the modern woman’s complexity of thought and comfort with sex through her in this image while the more modest woman in the background is fading. Moving from this imagined example to a real example of a woman we see Sophia Loren on the cover of Marie-Claire. Her appearance on Marie-Claire clues the viewer in on how iconic she is. She would be instantly recognizable to anyone who viewed this piece at the time. Loren would portray strong sexually complex women in her work. Axell is using her image to show how far the ideas of the sexual revolution and second-wave feminism have reached. Loren would depict realistic women in her work and in this work, she connects the viewer to the work.