Nuda Veritas

“Nuda Veritas,” a drawing to appear in the first issue of the Secession publication Ver Sacrum in 1898, is one of the premier representations of the Secession’s ultimate mission statement. This flat, expressionless young girl is a challenge posed to her viewer: she holds up an empty mirror, and asks what you see. She shows up more than once—for example, during the same year in the painting “Pallas Athena.” In her later representation, the young girl becomes a more curvaceous, sensuous young woman. “Nuda Veritas” establishes the Secession as not only a departure from tradition but a search for identity. A harbinger of the movement, this drawing poses the question that every other painting that follows attempts to answer.

(Left) "Nuda Veritas" as it appeared in the 1898 Ver Sacrum. (Right) A later incarnation of "Nuda Veritas"