The painter and graphic artist Elda Piščanec (1897–1967) created at the time when women became increasingly emancipated in artistic practice. She belonged to the first generation of women artists, who after long centuries can be studied at the Academy of Fine Arts, and finally began to learn painting and drawing the nude model, which consequently affected the free choice of motives. The body of work of Elda Piščanec reveals a number of works in which the author confidently portrayed naked female figures. In this article, I focus on her oil painting Two Girls, which was painted between 1930 and 1935th. With the feminist perspective, I intend to demonstrate the sexual difference in the depiction of lesbian nudes between female and male artists of that time. The painter portrayed the female naked figure in a non-sexist way in the simultaneous roles of object and subject of gaze. At the same time, this raises the question of if and how an image that was created in the early 20th century can be interpreted in the lesbian context.
