Lygia Clark, Sheila Hicks & Lenore Tawney
in ‘Women in Abstraction’, Centre Pompidou, Paris
19 May 2021 – 27 February 2022
Sheila Hicks, Textile Fresco, 1969. Courtesy: © Sheila Hicks; photo: Tom Bird
Lygia Clark, Sheila Hicks and Lenore Tawney are included in the landmark exhibition ‘Women in Abstraction’ at Centre Pompidou, Paris. Curated by Christine Macel, the exhibition is on public view until 23 August, before travelling to Guggenheim Bilbao (22 October 2021 – 27 February 2022).
‘Women in Abstraction’ sets out to write the history of the contributions of women artists to abstraction, through 106 artists and more than 500 works dating from the 1860s to the 1980s. It showcases the work of many of these women who suffer from a lack of visibility and recognition beyond the frontiers of their countries. Reviewing their specific contribution to the history of abstraction, the exhibition focuses on the careers of artists who were sometimes unjustly eclipsed from the history of art.
Macel’s exhibition reveals the decisive turning points that marked this development, the specific contexts for creation, the research conducted by the artists, individually or in groups, as well as the founding exhibitions. Transcending the traditional reductionist hierarchies between ‘high’ and ‘low’ art, the exhibition presents a history that includes dance, the decorative arts, photography and cinema, and takes a defiantly global approach, including modernities from Latin America, the Middle East and Asia.