A major new exhibition brings together for the first time over 150 paintings by an overlooked generation of 80 international women artists. London’s Whitechapel Gallery presents Action, Gesture, Paint: Women Artists and Global Abstraction 1940-70. The exhibition reaches beyond the predominantly white, male painters whose names are synonymous with the Abstract Expressionism movement, to discover the practices of numerous international women artists working with gestural abstraction in the aftermath of the Second World War.
The exhibition’s geographic breadth demonstrates that, while the Abstract Expressionism movement is said to have begun in the USA, artists all over the world were exploring similar themes of materiality, freedom of expression, perception and gesture in the mid-century period, from Art Informel to Arte Povera in Europe, and from calligraphic abstraction in East Asia to experimental, highly political practices in Central and South America, and the Middle East. The exhibition features well-known artists associated with the Abstract Expressionism movement, including American artists Lee Krasner (1908-1984) and Helen Frankenthaler (1928-2011), alongside lesser-known figures such as Mozambican-Italian artist Bertina Lopes (1924-2012) and South Korean artist Wook-kyung Choi (1940-1985). More than half of the works have never before been on public display in the UK.
Laura Smith, Curator of Whitechapel Gallery shares, “Action, Gesture, Paint’ reveals how these international artists were redefining artistic practice as an immersive arena for action, process and consciousness, drawing on the avant-garde movements of Expressionism and Surrealism. We also see how they endowed the ideas and methodologies of the movement with their own specific cultural, political and subjective dimensions. Their paintings were regarded not as images but as events, and they were an important catalyst for changing ideas around aesthetics, poetry, philosophy and politics in their distinct and particular regions.”
The show runs from the 9th February to the 7th May 2023. For further information, please visit the gallery,
Image: Wook-kyung Choi, Untitled (detail), 1960s Acrylic on canvas, 101 x 86 cm © Wook-kyung Choi Estate and courtesy to Arte Collectum
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