Women in Abstraction

Guggenheim Museum Bilbao gives more visibility to women in art history

With the exhibition Women in Abstraction, the Guggenheim Museum Bilbao will focus on the contribution of female artists to abstraction from 22 October 2021. More than 100 artists will be exhibited and their lives as well as the process of making their works invisible will be examined.

October 21, 2021
Fahrelnissa Zeid The Arena of the Sun, 1954 Oil on canvas 196 x 296.5 cm Istanbul Museum of Modern Art Collection, Istambul, Eczacıbaşı Group Donation
© Raad Zeid Al-Hussein © Istanbul Museum of Modern Art, Photo: Reha Arcan
Fahrelnissa Zeid The Arena of the Sun, 1954 Oil on canvas 196 x 296.5 cm Istanbul Museum of Modern Art Collection, Istambul, Eczacıbaşı Group Donation

At least in the past, many exhibitions dealing with abstraction have underestimated the fundamental role of women in the development of this movement. Opening at the Guggenheim Museum Bilbao on 22 October 2021, the show Women in Abstraction aims to do things differently and present a lesser-known history of art by concentrating on the contribution of female artists to abstraction. Focusing on the 20th and 21st centuries, it traces their lives and highlights the crucial turning points that shaped the abstraction movement. In doing so, it recalls both the work carried out by the artists individually or in groups and the founding exhibitions.

In order to tell a comprehensive and complex story with many voices, Women in Abstraction features over 100 artists working in various disciplines such as dance, applied arts, photography, film and performance art from Latin America, the Middle East and Asia, Europe and the United States. The exhibition also exposes the process of invisibilisation that has shaped the work of these artists, while presenting their positions with all their complexities and paradoxes. Many of the exhibited artists adopted a non-gendered identity, while others claimed a so-called »feminine« art. Women in Abstraction was organised by the Guggenheim Museum Bilbao in collaboration with the Centre Pompidou, Paris, and the support of the TERRA FOUNDATION FOR AMERICAN ART. The exhibition runs until 27 February 2022.Art.Salon

Joan Mitchell Méphisto, 1958 Oil on canvas 182 x 165 cm Centre Pompidou, Musée national d’art moderne, Paris, exchange of value, 1995
© Estate of Joan Mitchell © Centre Pompidou, MNAM-CCI/Jacques Faujour/Dist. RMN-GP
Joan Mitchell Méphisto, 1958 Oil on canvas 182 x 165 cm Centre Pompidou, Musée national d’art moderne, Paris, exchange of value, 1995

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