
Portable Garbo
1941 · Oil on canvas
22 × 33 cm (8 1/2 × 13 in.)
Art Institute of Chicago

Wilhelm Freddie was a Danish painter, sculptor, and filmmaker whose work moved between abstraction and surrealism, often depicting figural and erotic subjects that provoked legal censorship and imprisonment during his lifetime. His early abstract compositions gave way to densely realistic surrealist paintings before a later return to abstraction. Despite initial condemnation, his artistic contribution was eventually recognized, and his work is now understood as a significant counter to the conservative cultural standards of mid-twentieth-century Denmark.
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