Female Artists in Switzerland

At the age of twelve she painted this remarkable self-portrait in which she confidently shows herself in front of the easel with the tools of her profession in her hand.

Following her humanist education and training, Waser started to produce masterly miniatures — one of the few genres in those days that women could successfully specialize in.

She gained international recognition, became painter to the court in Braunfels, and after her return to Switzerland worked mainly for foreign commissions.

With these themes she adhered to the conventions that female artists were expected to abide by. Yet she soon found herself venturing beyond the allotted domain of women painters, producing religious images and nudes.

She painted numerous self-portraits, several also with these demonstratively presented brushes.

This refined painting shows a colorful cubist composition. The bright colors and playful brushstrokes contrast with the monochrome cubist works of Pablo Picasso and Georges Braque. 

Her work is thus close to Orphism, as we know it through the paintings of Sonia and Robert Delaunay full of color and rhythm.

Between the 1920s to 1950s she mostly painted figurative motifs like landscapes, flowers and portraits.

Through her sustained interest in the Expressionism of the Blue Rider, her artistic development reveals a strong, earthy coloring and a thick application of paint, combined with expressive simplified forms, often accentuated by outlines.

Cars, engines and rockets have always played an important role in her output. In 1998 she set up the She-Devils on Wheels automobile club, named after a 1960s film in which an all-female motorcycle gang exacts merciless revenge on the male world.