Somewhere in the world there is a woman creating, in her studio, sculptures born from the conversation between the sun and the landscape. Watercolors on the floor of a Madrid attic, urban art murals that talk about women with pockets full of flowers, and artistic gardens where tropical birds seem to miss a certain Mexican painter.
In ancient times, and as was the case in many other aspects of society, women always had an almost invisible role when it came to reinventing art in a world dominated by sexist narratives. Luckily, today we can discover all those oases where legendary women invited the muses to dance for eternity. From the Blue House to the Ndebele art village of South Africa, we immerse ourselves in a journey towards feminine creation.
Sea form is the name of a sculpture pierced by the wind and the whims of nature, in blue and greenish tones, which evoke the marine spell like a lost wave in the countryside of St. Ives in Cornwall. It is in this former colony of artists, today we can visit the Museum of Sculptures of Barbara Hepworth, who, together with her colleague Henry Moore, became, during the Second World War, one of the most outstanding sculptors of her generation thanks to the use of asymmetrical holes and gaps in many of its pieces.
The name by which the Frida Kahlo Museum is also known does not lie, especially when we leave behind the bustle of the bohemian neighborhood of Coyoacán to immerse ourselves in a blue microuniverse, where Mexico’s most iconic artist lived until her death in 1954. In La Casa Azul, the work of Kahlo and Diego Rivera whispers among collections of cacti, trees where the presence of monkeys and macaws can still be guessed, and Leon Trotsky having tea while, in the background, a ranchera plays. Of course, you have to get your ticket in advance, since the demand to visit this artistic temple is very high.
At the time of South Africa’s infamous apartheid, the Ndebele tribe was trapped in the north of the country, so they established a color system to communicate – for example, red symbolized danger, and green symbolized celebration. This is how the curious Ndebele geometric designs were born, maps that are displayed in different towns in the province of Mpumalanga. A chromatic paradise where everything revolves around the artist Esther Mahlangu, the main creator of this ethnic pattern that, in the late eighties, went around the world in the form of catwalk clothing, and even cars like the iconic BMW 525i.
For Virginia Woolf, London was always the city of despair, of hope, of dreams, of nightmares or, as she once said, also “the city of her destiny.” The English capital is the perfect setting to follow in the writer’s footsteps, especially when we talk about the Bloomsbury neighborhood where the author of Mrs. Dalloway used to spend much of her time, in places like the iconic Hatchards Bookstore – also one of the refuges of Oscar Wilde, until he was denied entry -; or the British Museum library, mentioned in the essay A Room of One’s Own.
Opened in 1987, the NMWA is considered the first museum in the world dedicated to defending women through art. The American patrons Wallace and Wilhelmina Holladay founded this space under the premise of recognizing the female influence in the art world, through a gallery located in an old Masonic temple, where today you can see more than 4,500 paintings, sculptures and decorative arts from artists such as Frida Kahlo, Hung Liu, Zanele Mujoli or Louise Bourgeois, among others.
Patachitra is a narrative painting conceived on rolls of cloth and originating from the state of Odisha, in eastern India. In the Naya villa they host different artists trained in this technique. Although for centuries the majority of communities were male, in recent decades, women like Sashimani Devi have inspired a generation of empowered artists who have challenged gender norms to contribute to this ancient tradition.
If we think of a contemporary Japanese artist, all eyes point to Yayoi Kusama. She is the creator of the polka dots, pumpkins and mirrors with repetitive patterns best known in the world, which have made her a true cultural icon. The artist’s obsessive universe can be discovered at the Yayoi Kusama Museum, located in the Shinjuku district of Tokyo. An urban temple where we can delight in the infinite mirror rooms, with their spaces filled with lights and mirrors.
Throughout the 20th century, the French sculptor Louise Bourgeois challenged the avant-garde movements of the moment to cast her own vision through her paintings and engravings, but, especially, sculptures made from materials as diverse as wood, marble or the bronze. A personal work whose ellipsis hatches in the sculpture Mama (Maman), a spider almost 9 meters high that is a tribute to her mother, a weaver by trade. An icon that today we can admire outside the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao, in full competition with Jeff Koons’ Puppy when it comes to stealing everyone’s attention.
