BADEANZUG (BLAU) / MONGI HIGGS

• Size: 340 x 145 cm
• Medium: Monoprint on raw canvas, acrylic on primed canvas
• Ready to hang: yes
• Signature: reverse side, also signed certificate
• Year: 2025
• Finish: Acryllack
• Shipping: rolled in the roll or on a stretcher frame in appropriate shipping packaging
• Delivery times: 8 – 14 working days (depending on size, customs formalities, etc.)
• incl. legal. VAT

In a swimsuit (blue), we encounter a woman who fits no classical ideal of beauty—and precisely through this becomes an archetype of later life in the Oberschweinbach mythos: the widow of a long-forgotten workshop owner, perhaps with a red-veined nose, but with a clear, grounded bearing, stepping onto the stage of composure in her bathing cap.

The composition consists of two contrasting painting techniques: on the left, a monotype—flat, irregular, almost print-like—where the body appears in a red, organic flow, imperfect, alive, slightly blurred. On the right, by contrast, the swimsuit: bold, block-like in a saturated blue, almost as if it were laid over the figure in a deliberately disruptive way—yet it is precisely this sense of “misfit” that produces an unsettlingly harmonious effect.

The apparent “flaw” in the depiction—the swimsuit that seems too tight, the blurred face, the red-emphasized nose—is no accident, but strategy. Higgs plays with the image of age beyond pathos of dignity or social kitsch. This woman is not a caricature, but someone who has seen everything: war, marriages, workshop grease, visits from grandchildren. And now she stands there—ready for the water that will carry her body as it is.

The reduction to form, color, and surface refuses any romantic charge. Life has left its marks, yes—but it has also produced a calm that cannot be learned, only lived. The woman in the blue swimsuit needs no audience. She swims through her days as through a pond that holds no opinions.

“And if someone whispers, ‘Isn’t her face a bit red?’—the image itself answers with quiet humor:”

“Yes. And? She lives.”