THE ACCIDENTAL CANON - A EXHIBITION OF PIONEERING WOMEN IN ARGENTINE ART

The Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes (National Museum of Fine Arts) presents, from March 25th, the exhibition “The accidental canon. Women artists in Argentina (1890-1950) ”, curated by researcher Georgina Gluzman. The show will bring together more than 80 works (made by 44 artists) with the intention of questioning the stories established in Argentine Art History and recovering the figure of these creators, many of them ignored or unknown.

THE ACCIDENTAL CANON - A EXHIBITION OF PIONEERING WOMEN IN ARGENTINE ART

"Considered weird, crazy, eccentric or, at best, idle women devoted to a mere hobby, Argentine female artists have generally suffered from concealment and invisibility not only from their contemporaries, but from the Art History itself," claims the Museum director, Andrés Duprat. “The current moment, in which the gender question has gained a citizenship card, requires reflection, awareness and the problematization of the role of women in the history of Argentine art. From Museum, we propose in this sense a space for permanent interrogation about the articulation between art and society, which, in the case of this exhibition, directs its attention to the constitution of the female gaze in local artistic production" he adds.

 

With works from the Bellas Artes museum collection, along with those of provincial and municipal museums and private collections, this exhibition - unprecedented in the history of the Bellas Artes - will allow the appreciation of paintings, drawings, engravings, photographs and sculptures by artists that, in some cases, will be exhibited for the first time.

The exhibition includes, on the one hand, works by artists with a presence on the margins of Art History and, on the other, pieces by artists that are practically unknown today, but whose activity earned them the admiration of their contemporaries,” explains Gluzman. "All of them went from being at the center of artistic activity to being, in the best of cases, mere footnotes to the stories of art history" adds the curator.

 

Regarding the title of the exhibition, the curator analyzes that, in the history of art, the canon is not the natural result of quality evaluation. On the contrary, “it is a product of decisions anchored in a patriarchal conception of culture that systematically excludes creative women. The canon is not indisputable: it is political, changeable and even capricious. In short, it is accidental ”. In this sense, the exhibition, by making visible the trajectories of the artists and their consecration in various fields, aims to “examine the paths traveled by women in the search for an artistic identity and a way of life”, adds Gluzman.

The complete list of participating creators is made up of Graham Allardice de Witt, Carolina Álvarez Prado, Hermi Baglietto, Eugenia Belin Sarmiento, Hortensia Berdier, Emilia Bertolé, Paulina Blinder, Gertrudis Chale, Lía Correa Morales, Josefa Díaz and Clucellas, Ludmila Feodorovna, Raquel Forner, Consuelo Remedios González, Annemarie Heinrich, María de las Mercedes Lacoste, Mariette Lydis, Cecilia Marcovich, Léonie Matthis, Andrée Moch, Ana María Moncalvo, Eloísa Graciana Morás, Laura Mulhall Girondo, María Obligado, María Catalina, Otero Lamas, Anita Payró , Hildara Pérez, Clelia Pissarro, María Carmen Portela, Sofía Posadas, Kettie Ross-Broglia, Hemilce Saforcada, Clorinda Sanna, Rosalía Soneira, Carlota Stein, Leonor Terry, Dora de la Torre, Aída Vaisman, Antonia Ventura and Verazzi, Ángela Adela Vezzetti , Elba Villafañe, María Washington, Ana Weiss, Julia Wernicke and Bibí Zogbé.