Anna Costenoble

Anna Costenoble (1866–1930) was a German artist during the Symbolism art movement. Her primary artistic mediums are prints and paintings, with works featuring portraits, landscapes, and women as subjects. Despite the fact that her works remain unknown and unseen by many, Costenoble had a long and prosperous career as an artist. Within Meyerhof's book, Costenoble includes an illustration of Eve and the serpent. The print features a fully clothed Eve with a side-eye expression as she faces away from the serpent, depicted with the upper torso of a menacing-looking man. Przybyszewski's poem utilized symbolic language to describe a sexual act between lightning (the sky) and a woman (earth), mirroring what is depicted in Costenoble's work. It describes how orgasmic intoxication unites death and life as mutually exclusive.

Prior to her later exhibition Tragedy of A Woman, Costenoble's work Conception was published in Moderni revue No. 3.

Exhibitions

Her artworks have been shown in a number of exhibitions, including the Vienna Secession Exhibition in 1899, which featured her aquatint Surf (1898). Costenoble's works in the exhibition Tragedy of a Woman portrayed the nude female form in a variety of emotional states, frequently with sensual undertones. Her works that would be later included in this exhibition came under criticism both by the public and in the magazine Moderní revue due to its social and sexual provocativeness.

Following the exhibition's criticism, Costenoble released a number of original etchings in the Vienna Secession newspaper in 1899 and the Bildner Kunst newspaper in 1905.