Guggenheim Museum Bilbao gives more visibility to women in art history

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.