What Is Happening? Art in the Life of Gertie Fröhlich

Synopsis

n 2018, director Marieli Fröhlich initiated a documentary about her mother, the artist Gertie Fröhlich. The director interviews over 20 artists, friends, and former collaborators whose recollections unveil the themes and the controversy surrounding Gertie Fröhlich‘s status as an artist, uncovering her influence on the Post-War Vienna Avant-Garde starting in her early 20s. As the film unfolds, these contradictions come to a head: Is the existence of the most important Austrian post-war gallery, Galerie nächst St. Stephan, indebted to Gertie Fröhlich, or was she merely the good spirit and secretary? Was her retelling of Greek myths an analogy for her vision of a refreshed matriarchal psyche — a position of equal significance to manifestations and deterritorialization of the body by Austria’s feminist artists? - New Jersey Film Festival