Condition Report: Very fine, harmonious overall appearance. No loss of substance. The cardboard slightly warped due to the artist's technique. The impasto paint areas in places with slight signs of paint shrinkage

Galerie Jährling, Wuppertal 1963 / Collection Willy and Fänn Schniewind, Neviges / Private Collection, Rhineland / Private Collection, Southern Germany

"KEEP IN STEP WITH THE TIMES!" reads a newspaper clipping on Lil Picard’s assemblage. It might be a headline or part of an advertisement, positioned on an imaginary ear on the face, adorned with an excess of accessories. In the background of the newspaper clipping, a woman's figure in uniform can be seen, a participant in a parade marching in step, neatly dressed. Lil Picard’s “Woolworth Girl” is a composition, a patchwork of cosmetic items intended to enhance feminine beauty: lipsticks, a powder compact, cream jars, hair clips, brushes, tubes, small brushes, hairnets, pins and more. Beautiful, well-groomed, fashionable, smart. "Woolworth Girl Keep in Step with the Times" is one of Lil Picard’s early "Cosmetics" works, created shortly before she began addressing socio-political and gender issues in her happenings.

Lil Picard, born in Germany as Lilli Elisabeth Benedick, worked in Berlin as a journalist, cabaret performer and designer before emigrating to New York in 1937 with her second husband, the banker Hans Felix Jüdell. Her time in Berlin was marked by her friendships with Richard Huelsenbeck, George Grosz, Emmy Hennings and Hugo Ball, as well as her acquaintance with Else Lasker-Schüler and Kurt Schwitters, whom she herself credited with having a major influence on her work. In New York, alongside her own artistic work, she began writing for German and American magazines about the city’s artists and art scene, thus quickly gaining a foothold in New York's art scene. She was a frequent visitor to Andy Warhol’s factory, knew Warhol closely, and became herself part of the performance art scene in New York.
Text: Anne Ganteführer-Trier