Feminist criticism from art, called feminist art, begins in the sixties of the twentieth century in the USA and is consolidated by reaching Europe in the seventies. It is part of the so-called Third Feminist Wave to which we have so much to thank for the current situation of women, explains María Victoria Margarida, curator of the exhibition Not one step back. Vanguard of feminist art in Valencia which opens on Friday at the Center d'Art l'Estació de Dénia.
The exhibition that we are presenting, he affirms, wants to make known the generation of these women who participated in the movement through their art with a selection of works by three important Valencian artists: Ángela García Codoñer and Isabel Oliver, pioneers of feminist art in Spain in the years seventies, and Maribel Domènech following in her wake in the eighties. The three artists have combined their artistic research with teaching as professors at the Polytechnic University of Valencia.
The sample tries to invite to reflect on the genealogy of the feminist movement. Knowing the history of women who for centuries have vindicated the right of women to be considered a human gender on an equal basis with men, manages to strengthen and consolidate feminist consciousness. It is empowerment.
Isabel Oliver presents three works, two of them unpublished, which belong to the series Museum tours (2022) in which she projects a reinterpretation of the past to understand present problems and provoke a renewal in the look towards the classics: she questions the use made of the female body in the history of painting built entirely from the patriarchal vision.
Ángela García Codoñer presents work from the series Misses (1974) in which she makes a resounding criticism of the feminine stereotypes assigned to women; the innocent dreams of princesses cut short by the crushing reality of women as the object of male desire.
Maribel Domènech presents two works: Gemini (1994) and continuous action (2004) both characterized by the fact of weaving in the intimacy of everyday life and the reflective solitude of the moment and the act: the shared dress as a symbol of equality between the two sexes and the act of weaving with household cables as a formula for creating connections that facilitate communication. Feminism of progress and concord.
