News

If this year’s Frieze Masters in London is any indication, enthusiasm for the rediscoveries of historically overlooked women artists is as strong as ever. A section of the fair entitled “Modern Women” is devoted to just these stories, bringing together a curated selection of artists who worked between 1880 and 1980. Curated by AWARE (Archive of Women Artists, Research and Exhibitions), the section’s solo exhibitions bring together both unfamiliar names and artists who have earned acclaim in recent years, including Faith Ringgold, Vera Molnar, and Tarsila Do Amaral.

Among the discoveries is the work of radical French Fauvist painter Émilie Charmy, who made a living from conventional domestic scenes and still-lives but painted seductive nudes and daringly risqué self-portraits on the side. She is included in a new exhibition on Fauvism at the Kunstmuseum Basel, which spotlights the women integral to the movement.

A smattering of female Old Masters are also on offer at the fair, including works by the fabulously successful Venetian Rococo painter Rosalba Carriera. Philip Mould is bringing two of her pastel studies. One of the studies, Personification of Africa (c. 1720), depicts a Black allegorical figure in exoticizing dress and holding up a scorpion. The image is indicative of the ways in which non-Western cultures were othered by European artists during the 18th century and beyond.

Two women artists who passed away in the last year are also being honored by exhibitors. The Italian photographer Lisetta Carmi, who spent her life representing marginalized communities will have works shown at Ciaccia Levi and Galleria Martini & Ronchetti. Meanwhile, Cecilia Brunson Projects will present paintings by the Brazilian artist Judith Lauand, who was associated with the Concrete movement and recently received a major retrospective at the São Paulo Museum of Art.

Below are five women artists whose works can be discovered at this year’s Frieze Masters (October 11–15) who we think you should know.

Ethel Schwabacher

Berry Campbell, New York

Ethel Schwabacher, Untitled (c. 1950). Photo: © Estate of Ethel Schwabacher, courtesy Berry Campbell, New York.

A regular of the New York art scene throughout the 1940s to the 1960s, the Abstract Expressionist Ethel Schwabacher (1903–1984) was included almost yearly in the Whitney Museum of American Art’s annual exhibitions. She had five solo shows at Betty Parsons Gallery. While living in Europe in the early 1930s, she experimented with Surrealist techniques like automatism to make early abstract works that explored her bodily experiences as a woman. On her return, she sought out as a mentor Arshile Gorky, who was himself reinventing European modernist influences within a New York context. She would later become his biographer.