Flora Spielrein

Flora Spielrein is a child of nature born in the wild mountains. Her fairylike beauty is reminiscent of Botticelli’s Flora; mischievous playfulness alternating with dreamy melancholy in her elfish gaze. In this sophisticated world, being natural like Flora is all the more extraordinary. In our noisy, dusty cities, we are longing for virginal springs and meadow dew. When a young woman personifies this lost purity, our wicked world is struck by an irresistible desire: a desire for both healing and destruction in equal measure: Just as the freshly fallen snow in a grove invites you to leave your mark on its virginity. Flora was lured away to the big city from the meadows of her childhood at an early age. As the muse and model of an avant-garde art scene, she soon came into close contact with the world of glamour. Despite all the excesses she endured as a young woman, something in her remained as pure as untouched snow. Her never-ending shyness and delicate bashfulness is not an act of coquetry. It is the result of that innate politeness, the inner decency of a truly graceful soul. Nothing is more compelling than innocence in a depraved world.

Flora Spielrein about herself.

It’s a magical moment when the puppeteer’s puppets come to life. Couldn’t you have sworn as a child that your toys had a secret life of their own? That they only pretended to be dead, lifeless things, while in reality they were alive, had thoughts of their own and looked at us? Maybe I am the only one with this fantasy. After all, I was always one of those pretty toys that were admired and coveted myself. As a model, I allowed my body to be presented as an object. I was the beautiful trophy of geniuses and maniacs. They looked at me incessantly. And I? I was watching them, lurking and hidden in this body they thought was me. Until I gave up modelling to become an artist in my own right.It is a magical moment in a woman’s life when she liberates herself from her passivity. When she transforms from an object of desire into a subject: an artist who loves women even more than men; an artist with her own, quite surprising views – about beauty, for example. Beauty mainly interests me when it comes to the beauty of ugliness; I love the imperfect, the broken. I want to delve beneath the smooth surface to find love, pain and tenderness. As a child, I used to gaze at the mountain lake, reflecting the sun, and wondered what secret depths lay hidden beneath its glistening surface.