3421 - MIRIAM CAHN

MIRIAM CAHN (Basel 1949–lives and works in Stampa) Cherry Tree Just Before Harvest. 1996. Oil on canvas. Titled, dated, and signed on the reverse: Cherry Tree Just Before Harvest 6/27/96 MM. 97 × 105 cm. Provenance: - Galerie Stampa, Basel. - Private collection, Switzerland, acquired from the above gallery in 1998. This work is recorded in the artist’s archive under no. 1803. In Miriam Cahn’s works, we encounter people, animals, objects, and nature directly, without embellishment. People appear naked, their faces shown head-on, their forms simplified. The images shy away from neither vulnerability nor contradictions. What matters is not only the subject, but also the physical act of painting. The body is a central theme in Cahn’s work. Nudity is an existential condition. She depicts people without clothes, thereby challenging conventional notions of how a body should look and how we perceive it. Her direct visual language also expresses a feminist stance that defies prevailing ideals of beauty and subverts social norms. The figures are not always alone. Bodies may overlap, merge, or become almost indistinguishable from one another. Alongside these are images consisting of only a few forms. An object becomes a large colored area; a tree, an expansive form. The subjects vary, but the directness of the painting remains. A tree need not symbolize life, nor an animal a human characteristic. Cahn resists fixed symbols and psychological clichés that reduce what is depicted to a specific meaning. Contours blur, forms dissolve or emerge distinctly. The application of paint remains visible—at times thin and restrained, at others dense and vigorous. The act of painting itself remains palpable. Cahn’s works depict people and the world around them without shying away from the ugly, the vulnerable, or the banal. The images seek no consensus. They do not explain themselves. They are simply there. Direct. Immediate.