Orphaned of his mother at the age of seven, Eugene von Bruenchenhein began working very early as a baker, florist, and then grocer. “I come from another world,” he claimed. For him, the year of his birth—the year of the passing of Halley’s Comet—was proof that the gods had endowed him with artistic genius. . In 1943, he married the young Eveline Kalke, who went on to become his muse, and secretly began a photographic body of work in which she was the sole subject: he produced hundreds of portraits of his wife, renamed Marie, adorned with various attributes in often erotic poses, successively appearing as a goddess, queen, star, seductress, or ingénue. His black-and-white photographs, developed in the sink, were sometimes hand-colored. At the same time, Eugene von Bruenchenhein created a number of experimental oil paintings, which he applied with his hands or with brushes made from Marie’s hair, as well as sculptures made from poultry bones.