The Women of Secession: Jeanne Mammen
Two Girls (Zwei Mädchen), circa 1925
watercolour and pencil on paper
33 × 27 cm (13 × 10½ in.)
auctioned at Sotheby’s in 2023 for 27,940 EUR

Around 1925, Jeanne Mammen was capturing the subtle emotional worlds of the young women around her, and Two Girls is one of those quietly luminous moments. Her watercolours from this period often focus on companionship, introspection, and the small gestures that reveal intimacy without theatrics. In this sheet, the figures emerge through a delicate interplay of pencil and wash, their closeness conveyed not through overt sentiment but through the gentle rhythm of their poses — one turned slightly away, the other gazing forward, both held in a moment of quiet tension.

Mammen’s line is light yet assured, allowing the scene to unfold with a softness that feels both immediate and deeply human. The washes of colour — dominated by greys, blues, and muted browns — lend the drawing a tender, introspective atmosphere, while the pencil understructure keeps the composition grounded. Nothing is overstated; the emotional register lies in the contrast between the figures, the subtle interplay of gesture and gaze, the sense of shared space. Mammen had a rare ability to portray women not as types or symbols but as individuals with inner lives, and this sheet reflects that gift with quiet clarity.

Sotheby’s offers a thoughtful reading of this work, noting how it belongs to the high point of Mammen’s neo‑objective realism — a moment when she was observing Berlin with an unflinching but deeply empathetic eye. Their commentary highlights how the drawing opens a small window behind the surface of the Golden Twenties: a city intoxicated by distraction, yet full of private, unguarded moments like the one captured here. The fine pencil lines and soft greys create a pause in time, leaving us to wonder whether these two young women are returning from a night out or simply sharing a quiet walk through the city. It is precisely this ambiguity — this sense of life happening just outside the frame — that gives the drawing its emotional resonance.

The auction note also traces Mammen’s remarkable path: born in Berlin, raised in Paris in a liberal, art‑supportive household, trained in Paris, Brussels, and Rome, and then abruptly uprooted by the First World War. Forced to flee back to Berlin without resources, she entered a city whose rigid social codes shocked her, yet she embraced its energy with determination. By the early 1920s she was living and working on the Kurfürstendamm, contributing drawings to magazines and venturing into spaces that many artists avoided — cafés, clubs, cabarets, queer venues, and the nocturnal corners of the metropolis. Her depictions of these environments made her a chronicler of the decade, capturing both its light and its shadows, and giving form to the emerging image of the “new woman” with a nuance few of her contemporaries matched.

Her later trajectory — the success of her 1930 solo exhibition at Galerie Gurlitt, the suppression of her work under National Socialism, her re‑emergence after the war, and the gradual rediscovery of her Weimar‑era drawings — forms the backdrop against which Two Girls gains even more depth. The renewed institutional attention of recent decades, from Bremen to the Berlinische Galerie, has only underscored how vital and contemporary her vision remains.

In this small, tender sheet, all of that history feels distilled: the empathy, the clarity, the quiet observation, and the deep understanding of women’s lives in a rapidly changing world. It is a work that speaks softly, but with lasting emotional depth.