Warja Lavater (Swiss, 1913–2007), detail from Le Petite Chaperon Rouge, 1965, lithograph on accordion-fold book.© 2020 Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York / ADAGP, Paris. Photo: © JoAnn Sieburg-Baker
20th Century Women
Twentieth Century Women examines the groundbreaking achievements of artists represented in collections of the Bechtler Museum of Modern Art and the Bechtler family. On display in the Bechtler’s fourth-floor gallery, Twentieth Century Women, the exhibition features one-hundred works by twenty-four artists in varied mediums including: painting, sculpture, textile, photography, drawing, and printmaking. This will be the first exhibition at the Bechtler Museum of Modern Art to highlight artistic achievements by women in a significant way in the museum’s eleven-year history.
Featuring artists of diverse nationalities, generations, and backgrounds, the exhibition points to the existence of modernism outside the city-centers of New York, Paris, and London by highlighting artists from Portugal, Sweden, Switzerland, Argentina, and Poland. Blending works by well-known artists with those that are lesson-known, this exhibition will expand awareness of underrecognized artists by elevating and contextualizing their work among their contemporaries. Key works in the exhibition will be accompanied by large-scale images of artists at work in their studios to contextualize the artworks and draw attention to the artists’ varied working methods. In addition to artworks, a selection of rarely seen items from the Bechtler’s library and archive will be on display, including correspondence, to emphasize the personal nature of the Bechtler collection and highlight the personal relationships between the Bechtler family and the artists they collected.
Artists include: Betty Parsons (American, 1900-1982), Lisbeth Bissier (German, 1903-1989), Barbara Hepworth (British, 1903-1975), Germaine Richier (French, 1904-1959), Cornelia Forster (Swiss, 1906-1990), Maria Helena Vieira da Silva (Portuguese, 1908-1992), Anna-Eva Bergman (Swedish, 1909-1987), Hedda Sterne (Romanian, 1910-2011), Alicia Penalba (Argentina, 1913-1982), Meret Oppenheim (German, 1913-1985), Warja Lavater (Switzerland, 1913-2007), Elizabeth Thalman (Swiss, 1918-2000), Katharina Sallenbach (Swiss, 1920-2013), Gillian Jagger (British, 1930-2019), Niki de Saint Phalle (French, 1930-2002), Vera Isler-Leiner (German, 1931-2015), Bridget Riley (British, b. 1930), Audrey Flack (American, b. 1931), Maud Gatewood (American, 1934-2004), Lee Hall (1934-2017), Isabel Quintanilla (Spanish, 1938- 2017), Barbara Heé (Swiss, b. 1957), Elizabeth R. Turk (American, b. 1961- ), and Maja Godlewska (Polish, b. 1965).
Twentieth Century Women is curated by Anastasia James, Curator, Bechtler Museum of Modern Art with curatorial assistance by Briana Anderson.
Support for Twentieth Century Women is generously provided by
