Female head Gudrun Baudisch Wiener Werkstatte ca. 1928

Gudrun Baudisch (1907-1982) was one of the innovative artists who had a decisive influence on the ceramic works of the Wiener Werkstätte. In 1926, at the age of nineteen, she was accepted into the ceramics department under the direction of Vally Wieselthier and soon became one of the most important young artists. She worked for the Wiener Werkstätte for three years before opening her own ceramics workshop in Vienna in 1930.
Supported and influenced by her mentor Vally Wieselthier, the works of Baudisch stand for the “Expressive Ceramics” of the Wiener Werkstätte par excellence. This artistic pioneering work can easily be illustrated by the example of the woman’s head.
Baudisch designs the striking sculpture as an image of the emancipated woman of the 1920s. With reduced stylistic means she gives the fashionable lady the then modern look with a short haircut. She looks self-confidently with raised eyebrows and a seductive look. Baudisch thus endows the woman’s head with the aura of self-determined aloofness and creates a stylistically convincing transition from Art Nouveau to Art Déco.