Woman in the first geometric abstraction: an artistic counter-history in gender terms

Abstract

This paper tries to recover female artwork in the first geometric abstraction. On the one hand, it turns to the rewriting of modern art in Jacques Rancière’s aesthetics, based on the value of equality and the idea of giving a voice to those who did not have a say in the classical History of Art. On the other hand, it supports the revisionist spirit of current aesthetics, the reconsideration of the value of freedom which still denies artistic status to the non-free expressive forms. So, a parallel is considered between women artists and the so-called minor arts, both excluded from the “great art” due to their lack of freedom and both dignified, however, in non-objective geometric works of art by Liubov Popova, Sonia Delaunay, Anni Albers and Marlow Moss.