FEMINIST AVANT-GARDE of the 1970s. Works from the VERBUND COLLECTION

The advent of the female artists

Using the extensive holdings of the VERBUND COLLECTION, this exhibition is dedicated to one of the most important art history phenomena of the 1970s: the advent of the female artists, who countered the view of a male-dominated art world with a self-determined ‘image of the woman’. With the title “Feminist Avant-Garde”, Gabriele Schor, founding director of the VERBUND COLLECTION, Vienna, underscores the pioneering achievement of a generation that emancipated itself from the traditional female role of muse and model in order to establish the woman as an active subject in art and society.

The female artists are part of a strengthening civil rights and women’s movement in the 1960s that results in women’s concerns increasingly being discussed in public. The personal is understood as being political and women increasingly get make themselves heard through their organisation into feminist networks both socially and in the field of art. The rejection of traditional models based on normative ideas is what connects the female artists of the “Feminist Avant-Garde”. In a radically provocative way and yet with plenty of poetry, humour and irony, one-dimensional role assignments as mother, housewife and wife are questioned. Female sexuality, beauty, violence towards women, clichés and stereotypes become central themes, amongst other things in the form of role-plays. The female artists frequently work under the use of their body and, in a rejection of male-dominated painting, champion historically less utilised media such as photography, video, film as well as action and performance.

The exhibition is arranged into four areas:

• Reduction to the role of mother, housewife and wife
• Alter Ego: Masquerade, parody and role-plays
• Female sexuality versus objectification
• Normativity of beauty

Photos: © Tobias Wootton @ ZKM | Karlsruhe