EXHIBITION | Action, Gesture, Paint: Women Artists and Global Abstraction, 1940 - 1970
December 20, 2023
Ethel Schwabacher, Woman: Red Sea, Dead Sea, 1951, oil on canvas, 31x37 in
Action, Gesture, Paint: Women Artists and Global Abstraction, 1940 - 1970
Kunsthalle Bielefeld, Germany
December 2, 2023 - March 3, 2024
Kunsthalle Bielefeld presents an extensive global show that for the first time in Europe focuses on the work of female artists and their role in the development of abstraction after 1945. The movement we now describe as “Abstract Expressionism” officially began in the mid-20th century in the United States. But around the world, artists* explored parallel approaches to abstraction through materiality, expressivity, and gesture, from Informel to Arte Povera, from calligraphic abstraction and Gutai in East Asia to experimental, deeply political practices in Central and South America, North Africa, and the Middle East.
The exhibited artists did not work in a vacuum. The following graphic illustrates the worldwide networking of female artists with each other, with their male colleagues and with the international spread of abstraction. The map is an interactive representation of over 80 artists’ biographies from the exhibition catalog Action – gesture – color. Women artists and abstraction 1940-1970.
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