In the past, Donachie has focused her attention on two flash point images in the history of 20th century counter-culture; hippie communes and political radicals of the 1960’s where previous subjects have included actors Mark Frechette and Daria Halprin (who starred in Michelangelo Antonioni’s 1970 film Zabriskie Point) and members of the Charles Manson family; and Monte Verità, an area in Ascona, Switzerland that was home to a group of dissidents and nonconformists between the turn of the century and the Second World War.

Many of the images in this current exhibition continue to reference Monte Verità, a commune of artists, writers, vegetarians, pacifists, nudists, Freemasons, feminists, Theosophists and bohemians who settled in the hills above Lago Maggiore in 1900. It was there that a veritable ‘return to nature’ in the form of a countermovement was established as an alternative to the rapid industrialisation in Europe at the close of the 19th century. Between 1900 and 1940 Monte Verità became a cultivation ground for unconventional art and lifestyles. Emphasis was on life reform and new religious and spiritual values through a symbiosis with nature, freedom of expression, sexual liberation and an emphasis on vegetarian and macrobiotic diets.

The golden age of Monte Verità can be divided into several movements: the anarchists (Erich Mühsam, Gustav Landauer, Raphael Friedeberg, the psychotherapist Otto Gross) were succeeded by the vegetarian movement (the feminist and pianist Ida Hofmann, Henri Oedenkoven, the brothers Karl and Gusto Gräser), which was then followed primarily by Dadaists and Expressionists of every persuasion. Similar to the Londoner Bloomsbury group or the Worpswede group in northern Germany – and later also the Bauhaus movement in Dessau – artists of every ilk gathered on Monte Verità to draw inspiration from the emanation of a parallel world.

Prominent bohemian characters from Monte Verità such as Hermann Hesse, Otto Gross, Hugo Ball, Rudolf von Laban, Emmy Hennings and Franziska zu Reventlow became a source of inspiration for Donachie’s current show. The sensual purple portrait of Franziska zu Reventlow depicted in “Then Between Lust and Tragedy I Know Not What” (a title taken from the one of her diary entries – all other painting titles in the exhibition are taken from Herman Hesse’s poetry) was an aristocrat who considered herself a painter and artist. She was morally and sexually rebellious. In Franziska’s mind, art and rebellion went hand-in-hand, and her fame derived largely from her erotic freedom and promotion of women’s liberation. She had a touch of fragility and pathos symbolized by her fondness of performing and for the carnival. In her autobiographical novels she wrote of herself as a `martyr for freedom’ and a `gladiator of the new time.’ She recommended revealing ones body to others, to talk about sex and to free oneself from shame and guilt. Her views became ensconced within the cult of Monte Verità.

Donachie’s approach to her subject matter has always cunningly used a combination of found imagery and artis tic elucidation. This strategy continues in “And The Bridge is Love” where images seem ambiguously caught in a dark utopian vortex that suggests parallels and historical/international connections between two of the most important counter-cultural movements of the last century. For instance, in “How Heavy The Days” Otto Gross’s and Mark Frechette’s likenesses morph into a stirring portrait of a young man whose countenance embodies both the hope and disappointment of two separate yet connected generations in search of an idyll.