Sophie von Hellermann (B. 1975)

Rendered in subtle washes of acrylic on a vast, immersive scale, Christa Päffgen is a captivating early work by German artist Sophie von Hellermann. With their deliberately romantic, anecdotal and pastel-washed appearance, her canvases are conceived in opposition to the grandiloquence, masculine bravado and gravitas that dominated German painting during the post-war period. Working in fast, wet-on-wet brushstrokes on unprimed cotton, her fluid picture planes offer analogies for the ways in which identities slip and dissolve under the pressure of aspirational media imagery. The present work takes its place within von Hellermann’s early cast of female celebrity subjects: Christa Päffgen was the real name of Warhol protégé and Velvet Underground vocalist Nico. Infamous for her wild lifestyle, the icon is captured here in her prime, before her tragic death in Ibiza in 1988. ‘I have an idea that we are merely a projection of the past’, says von Hellermann, ‘that we don't really exist and that we are an imaginary future scenario played out.’