Paris: 3 exhibitions to (re) discover female artists at the beginning of the school year

Frida Kahlo at the Palais Galliera

Female artists have long been invisible, art history textbooks often relegated them to the subordinate roles of mothers, wives or sisters, when they simply omitted their names. Frida Kahlo is one of the rare exceptions to the rule. Born in 1907, she was one of the most influential artists of the 20th century, spreading her art of hers also in pop culture, thus making her essential in the eyes of the general public. But the exhibitions about him are already numerous. What else did we have to say and show?

This year the Palais Galliera looked at its relationship with clothing and questioned the construction of its identity through the way it presents itself to the world and represents itself.

In collaboration with the Frida Kahlo Museum, the exhibition unveils an incredible collection of over 200 objects from Kahlo’s home in Mexico City, Casa Azul, where the artist was born and raised. There are clothes, correspondence, cosmetics, accessories, medical implants (Kahlo suffered a lot, following an accident, at the age of 18, which left her handicapped for the rest of her life) … This precious collection of her personal effects had been sealed when she died in 1954 by her husband, the painter Diego Rivera and was rediscovered fifty years later, in 2004.

It is therefore a real treasure, of traditional clothes, pre-Columbian necklaces that Kahlo has collected, as well as photos and videos, which the Palais Galliera offers to see. To enter the artist’s intimacy, as close as possible to the one we know without really knowing it, especially through self-portraits that are as impressive as they are enigmatic at first sight.

“Frida Kahlo, beyond appearances”, at the Palais Galliera, from 15 September to 5 March 2023

Alice Neel at the Center Pompidou

First scheduled for 2020, then postponed due to the pandemic, the retrospective dedicated to the American figurative artist Alice Neel will open on 5 October.

An awaited exhibition, which presents almost 75 paintings and drawings by this eminent figure of North American art, who remained in the shadows throughout his life.

An unclassifiable painter, Alice Neel is at the origin of a unique, committed work that depicts an American society on the margins, invisible or oppressed. She in particular she paints many women, with a look away from male gauze American, breaking with the male canons of the time. Since the 1930s she has been making series of portraits of characters typical of New York at the time. But her work has been, in the course of her career, also crossed by the question of motherhood, following the tragedy of the loss of the first daughter, following an illness.

Long on the fringes of the art world, she found herself thrust into the spotlight at the turn of the 60s and 70s, thanks to the Women’s Liberation Movement, and in particular when she painted the portrait of feminist Kate Millet for the cover of Time Magazine. A feminist herself and very politically committed, she has also long been linked to the American Communist Party.

Even after his death in 1984, his importance has never stopped growing, thanks to several exhibitions in leading cultural institutions, and to the distribution of a biographical film made by his nephew, in 2007.

Ignored for a long time during her life, not integrating into any current, which however she crossed without batting an eye, from pop art to conceptual art, Neel has always gone against the current of the avant-gardes of the time. .

“Alice Neel, a committed look”, at the Center Pompidou, from 5 October until 16 January 2023

Rosa Bonheur at the Musée d’Orsay

Rosa Bonheur is today one of the best known artists and 2022 commemorates the bicentenary of her birth, in Bordeaux. It is in this context that one of the largest retrospectives of her work is organized at the Musée d’Orsay, in collaboration with the Museum of Fine Arts of her hometown, the Rosa Bonheur Museum of Thomery (Seine-et-Marne) and the Departmental museum museum of Barbizon painters.

Outstanding artist, Rosa Bonheur (yes, that’s her real name) was also a great lover of nature and very soon put the animal world at the center of her art. Committed to animal recognition, she was a forerunner of the naturalist movement and produced an immense number of outstanding works of realism. She is in particular at the origin of multiple paintings that portray animals as individuals in their own right, with prodigious technicality.

Benefiting from immense public recognition, Rosa Bonheur was one of the first female artists to be able to make a living from her work. A celebrity that even led her to have a doll in her likeness, and a street in her name, after her death, in the early 1900s (quite rare, at the time even non-existent, to underline) .

At the age of 37 he bought a castle in Thomery, not far from Paris, and installed the large studio he had long dreamed of. The place also has a menagerie, allowing Rosa Bonheur to surround herself with dozens of animals.

For a time forgotten by art history textbooks, she quickly returned to the forefront and is now one of the best known artists to the general public. So much so that in Paris today, several guinguettes bear her name …

Cover image: Unsplash / Bastien Nvs

“Rosa Bonheur (1822-1899)”, at the Musée d’Orsay et al Bordeaux Museum of Fine Arts, from 18 October to 15 January 2023