Nasreen Mohamedi
This touring exhibition is the result of a close collaboration between the Whitechapel Gallery, the Kunsthalle Bielefeld and the Fondation Vincent Van Gogh Arles.
A major new exhibition brings together for the first time over 150 paintings by an overlooked generation of 80 international women artists.
Reaching beyond the predominantly white, male painters whose names are synonymous with the Abstract Expressionist movement, this exhibition celebrates the practices of the numerous international women artists working with gestural abstraction in the aftermath of the Second World War.
It is often said that the Abstract Expressionist movement began in the USA, but this exhibition’s geographic breadth demonstrates that artists from all over the world were exploring similar themes of materiality, freedom of expression, perception and gesture, endowing gestural abstraction with their own specific cultural contexts – from the rise of fascism in parts of South America and East Asia to the influence of Communism in Eastern Europe and China.
The exhibition features well-known artists alongside lesser-known including Etel Adnan, Helen Frankenthaler, Elaine de Kooning, Lee Krasner, Joan Mitchell, Carol Rama, Alma Thomas, Nasreen Mohamedi amongst others.
"Bursting with feeling, this exhibition is a landmark, celebrating so many women who found their own voices and swelled the global scene of abstract expressionism."
-Jackie Wullschläger, Financial Times