In order to have a true picture of society, history or culture as a whole, it is necessary to know the artistic production of a wide variety of people. However, the history of art has been narrated without considering the female contribution. And, in an attempt to explain or justify the absence of women in the visual arts, it has been admitted that the social context of the time prevented or limited the entry of women into the world of art.
Publisher: Prensas de la Universidad de Zaragoza Year of publication: 2023 Available in PUZ: here. Available in Unebook: here.
It is true that women artists have had to face a series of obstacles over time, such as the lack of access to education, resources or the underestimation of their artistic creations. But, although it is true that the context has marked the creation of women artists, since for centuries they have not found themselves in the same conditions as men nor have they had access to the same training or the same opportunities, what is indisputable is that this has not stopped them from creating. And, consequently, it is essential to know and examine the female artistic contribution.
Today it is already recognized that the contribution of women artists has been forgotten and silenced in the history books and in the collections of museums and galleries. The dominant historiography has silenced the creation of the artists. In this sense, it should be noted that it is not that there are no women artists, but rather that we do not know them. Historians and feminists have criticized the absence of women in art manuals and museums since the 1970s.
In fact, one of the major introductory works to the art world, Ernst H. Gombrich’s The History of Art, first published in 1950, one of the most famous and popular art books ever written and has been a Best seller for half a century, it had to wait for its sixteenth edition in 2008 to include a woman artist.
As the feminist historian Patricia Mayayo points out, throughout history women have been shown countless times as objects of representation, but they have been made invisible as creative subjects: women have been present for centuries as objects, but rarely as subjects. In any case, it is not a question of rewriting history, but of telling it adequately and objectively. And, in this sense, we are currently witnessing an exciting stage in which the History of Art is building a new historiographical narrative.
Women in the artistic system. 1804-1939, edited by professors Concha Lomba, Ester Alba and Magdalena Illán and by professor Alberto Castán in Presses of the University of Zaragoza, gives good proof of this. In its pages, thirty-three studies have been gathered that address the presence and participation of women in the artistic scene, as well as the contributions of the different creators in the development of the different plastic languages, in the time frame between 1804 and 1939. and in the geographical scope of the Spanish cult scene and its relations with the European space.
This work examines how the participation and consideration of female artists developed in the cultural panorama from the beginning of the 19th century to the first decades of the 20th. And, likewise, the different artistic languages to whose development and consolidation a significant number of women artists contributed, both in Spain and internationally, are studied.
This book highlights the continuing and fundamental contribution of women to the fine arts during the 19th century and the first decades of the 20th century. And, in addition, the particular analysis of certain artists allows in-depth knowledge of specific cases that reveal the relevant and unfairly underestimated role played by female creators in the artistic system. A work, then, that influences and justifies the need to change the traditional discourse of art history.
In addition, the volume shows that today we can affirm without fear of being wrong that there are a significant number of creative, independent and fighting women, whose quality of their production is indisputable and that it is essential that we exclusively incorporate the traditional account of the history of art. male.
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