Of all the avant-garde movements, Surrealism attracted the most women to it ranks, as it was both novel and provocative and supported an image of women as spontaneous and intuitive beings who were in control of their private lives and who, as citizens, demanded the right to work and vote as well as to enjoy their own bodies. It was art that attached importance to personal realities and which enabled eroticism and poetice motion to be combined as a means of expression, promoting duality and ambiguity in response to the dictates of reason.
However, it was not long before women removed them selves from an art movement that they found disappointing because, usually, it saw them primarily as muses, little girls, or clair voyants. The process of breaking free was a painful and dramatic one, and at times involved tragicendings which, paradoxically, helped them to gain their creative independence and overcome the theoretical and ideological yoke that the intellectual leaders of the movement wished to impose upon them.
They were misunderstood fighters and rebels and, in some cases, were perversely eclipsedorused by their male partners. But their lives and their art not only defied social and institutional conventions to representan “alterity” that would be permitted by others, but above all firmly criticized the repressive impact of imposing gender-based rules. With these women’sart works, We are Completey Free. WomenArtists and Surrealism shows how such new patterns of sensitivity and their role as a contrast to patriarchal society first emerged.
Curated by José Jiménez, professor of a esthetics and art theory at the Universidad Autónoma de Madrid, the exhibition reinstates in the role that they deserve a group of women artists whose works too douton the Surrealist art scene and which has had to wait too long to gain major recognition: Eileen Agar, Claude Cahun, Leonora Carrington, GermaineDulac, Leonor Fini, Valentine Hugo, Frida Kahlo, Dora Maar, Maruja Mallo, Lee Miller, Nadja, MeretOppenheim, KaySage, Ángeles Santos, Dorothea Tanning, Toyen, Remedios Varo and UnicaZürn. Their individualism and personality can be strongly felt in the more than 100 works on display and which include paintings, drawings, sculpture, collage, photography and film, all brought to get her for this event.
From 10 October 2017, to 28 January 2018
Museo Picasso Málaga (Palacio Buenavista, C/San Agustín, 8) Málaga.
+ information: www.museopicassomalaga.org
