Overlooked by history, Guggenheim displays wealth of abstract art by women

Bilbao, Spain, Oct 21 (EFE).- Over 400 works by 100 women artists have gone on display at the Bilbao Guggenheim’s Women in Abstraction exhibition, which explores the role of women in abstract and their all-too-common lack of recognition in a field dominated by a history of male discourse.

The exhibit opens to the public on Friday and brings together artwork from around the world, including Latin America, the Middle East and Asia.

“For me it was a statement to make these women visible,” the Centre Pompidou’s Christine Macel, who organized the showcase in collaboration with the Guggenheim, said during an introductory panel Wednesday evening.

“One of the issues of this exhibition is invisibilization, the process of not making these artists visible in art history,” she added.

Marcel pointed out that female abstract artists were particularly absent from public discourse in the earlier part of the 20th century, an era dominated by the likes of Picasso and Kandinsky. But this tendency began to change around the 1980s.

The exhibition runs until 27 February. EFE

if/jt/mp