Celebrate a Great Woman Artist Everyday

The legacy of the Guerrilla Girls, the group of anonymous feminist artists that emerged in 1985 in New York to fight sexism and racism in the art world, is taking shape internationally given the growing number of exhibitions dedicated to recovering and celebrating the historically obscured female artistic legacy.

In Barcelona, ​​the CCCB has just opened Feminisms!, an exhibition that highlights the milestones of the feminist avant-garde that, in the seventies, began to rewrite the canon of art history. The exhibition includes more than 200 works by 73 artists such as Cindy Sherman, Helena Almeida, Ana Mendieta, Judy Chicago, Valie Export, Birgit Jürgenssen, Ketty La Rocca, Orlan, Gina Pane, Martha Rosler or Martha Wilson, and also works by eight local artists: Pilar Aymerich, Eugènia Balcells, Mari Chordà, Marisa González, Eulalia Grau, Fina Miralles, Àngels Ribé and Dorothée Selz. Recently, the Miró Foundation has also dedicated exhibitions to artists such as Lee Miller and Lina Bo Bardi. In Madrid, the Thyssen Museum just closed Pioneers: Women of the Russian avant-garde. Last week, we were talking about the retrospective that the Barbican Center in London dedicates to Lee Krasner, an abstract expressionist practically unknown to the general public. Also in London, the Tate Modern opened last month a great exhibition of the cubo-futuristic Natalia Goncharova, the Serpentine Galleries are showing Faith Ringgold and Luchita Hurtado (88 and 98 years old) and the National Portrait Gallery has a retrospective of Cindy Sherman. In Paris, the Pompidou currently exhibits the work of Dora Maar and the Musée de Orsay has just opened an exhibition on Berthe Morisot, a first-rate impressionist but much less known than her contemporaries Monet, Degas and Renoir.

Nevertheless, the exhibitions dedicated to women still represent a fairly small percentage compared to the bulk of programming of any city. In this context, in 2015, the young art historian Katy Hessel decided to open the Instagram account @thegreatwomenartists to celebrate an artist every day. Hessel created the profile when she realised she found it difficult to name more than 10 female artists without thinking too much.

What began as a personal research project, already has more than 65,000 followers on Instagram and Hessel has become a champion of women’s art. “Instagram is a tool that currently reaches a lot of people, it is hugely accessible and very useful for disseminating artistic practices. Although I love curating exhibitions, Instagram has the ability to reach many more people and that makes my work meaningful”, recognizes Hessel. “I want to reach as many people as possible, especially since art is sometimes regarded as an elitist discipline, but it is not so.”

In each publication, Hessel casts light on female figures of all times, from the baroque painter Artemisa Gentileschi to the impressionist Mary Cassatt, the Japanese Katsushika Ōi, the Spanish surrealist Maruja Mallo to the young Haitian Florine Démosthène. A quick look at her latest posts shows how only a few female artists, especially pre-1920s, are well known. The account has more than 1300 publications, and although it does not avoid celebrating artists who are already part of the canon, the vast majority of entries combine historically overlooked women figures with contemporary women artists.

Hessel works in the communication department of the Victoria Miró gallery in London, where she started as an intern, but this summer she also debuts as curator of her fourth exhibition on women artists. The show includes works by three very young painters: the Colombian María Berrio, the Scottish Caroline Walker and the English Flora Yukhnovich; three artists with radically different styles formally but with interesting points in common in their approach to the genre of painting and the representation of women.

Projects such as The Great Women Artists show how social networks can also be a tool to cultivate a critical spirit and a commitment to change by the new generations. We must rethink the history of art from a perspective not only more equal in terms of gender but also less Euro and American centric and more diverse.

Author: Sol Polo