Ottilie Roederstein: Why was the painter forgotten?

Slowly they all step forward out of the dark of the stage.

The painters who art history keeps hidden behind its magnificent curtains like a supply for fairer times.

Allow me, Ottilie Wilhelmine Roederstein.

Nobody has been called that for a long time, and you immediately know that the stranger must be a surprise guest from the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

Actually astonishing, says the curator Sandra Gianfreda, who arranged the Roederstein premiere for the Kunsthaus Zürich: “A name that has not been heard in Switzerland for eighty years.” In Germany, where the Städel in Frankfurt hosted the exhibition at Summer takes over, it's no different. Simply forget that the artist was once one of the most sought-after and best-employed portraitists of her time.