artists of the golden age who describe Dutch and flamenco painting

For decades, the works of Rembrandt, Vermeer, Rubens, Van Dyck and Frans Hals were the protagonists of the great retrospectives and catalogs that established the predominantly male canon of the time. These names occupied the center of the story of the nicknamed Dutch Golden Sign and Flamenco, leading many of their contemporaries to their names.

Exhibition Undecidable. The Artist of Amberes in Amsterdam, 1600-1750which was inaugurated at the Museo de Bellas Artes de Gante (MSK) and will next travel to the National Museum of Women in the Arts in Washington, offers a radical tour of perspective.

After more than two years of investigation, the mystery was solved brings together the works of more than 40 artists active between 1600 and 1750, highlighting the importance of women in the arts – from painting, creation and sculpture to textiles – in the Belgian region and the Low Countries. The goal is not just to “intimidate forgotten names”, but to dismantle the idea that creators were the exception isolated.

Exhibition on order Frederica Van Dam, We will first look at the biographies and self-portraits of these artists, such as the painter Judith Leyster, one of the great masters of the portrait, Anna Maria van Schurman, scientist and artist, and Maria Schalcken, trained in the circle of familiar stories. Sus obras not only revindican officio, until we are forced to incorporate their figures into the mental picture we have of the Dutch and Flemish art of the 17th century, we are no longer accustomed to a gallery of men.

The diversity of genres and styles is appreciated in paintings, genre scenes, religious painting and historical painting. Ah, the figures of Clara Peeters, Marie Faydherbe, Susanna van Steenwijck-Gaspoel or Michaelina Wautier enter the game, who “alternative history”. They limit themselves to following stable models, many of them innovating in their fields, dialogue with tradition and disputes over space with their male colleagues.

The museum reflects how most professional painters and painters come from craft or developing families connected to the art world: hija entrepreneurs, painters, painters of their own height. He still has to work in the family business anyway works will be sold under the signature of the father or brother.

High-ranking women, such as Catherina Backer or Louise Hollandine of the Palatinate, also trained in painting, music and languages ​​as part of a refined education, whose rare works often originate from their social circle. At the same time, home textiles and jewelry produced high-quality charms and borders intended for the elite, so that their names would go down in history.

The museum also highlights the gender roles of the era. The ideal of a wife and motherIn her childhood, she marked the life of these artists in a very false way: Judith Leyster practically disappeared from childhood, while Rachel Ruysch was able to maintain a long career as a flower painter because she was the mother of six children. Others, like Louise Hollandine or Catharina Ykens, chose a religious life, and figures like Anna Maria van Schurman chose not to leave home and return to study, prioritizing education and independence.

From now on, the exhibition reconstructs the participation of artists in the professional circles of the time: their presence in crowds like San Lucas in cities like Haarlem, Amberes or Bruselas; on paper as entrepreneurs experimenting with new supports, such as Magdalena van de Passe with her prints on satin and linen, or on weights in future women-led shopping stores in Amberes. You are redes Explain the topic of ice cream maker and demonstrate a dense plot of collaboration, learning and participation.

Indeed, the colonial trade and global economy of the time also included the works of these artists: trade with Peru, Mexico, Asia or the Caribbean, supported by violence, forced labor and enslavement, enslavement in the Lower Tierras and imbued with culture.

In the stories of Michaelina Wautier or Catharina Backer, there seem to be many important imports such as tobacco, porcelain or crockery, while Johanna Vergouwen worked for the American market and the Amberes textile industry exported religious textiles. Maria Sibylla Merian traveled to Suriname (which was part of the Low Countries at the time) with her hijas. Discuss plants and insects with scientific accuracyand other creators encountered new shipments in European courts.

The final stage of the exhibition is what interests you, It puts a strain on the prestige that so many people live by in lifetheir names were given later: erroneous attributions, hidden works in private collections or deposits, devalued genres and techniques relegated to “applied art”.

In dialogue with this historical matter, new contemporary artists — Christiane Blattmann, Manon de Boer, Melissa Gordon, Aglaia Konrad, Valérie Mannaerts, Hana Miletić, Annaïk Lou Pitteloud, Heidi Voet and Asia Zielińska — sign a specific intervention in one of the rooms of the Giant Museum of Fine Arts.

The councils created a collective work Xwhich begins as a gesture of alliance with the creators of the 17th and 18th centuries: the names of 179 artists identified by history are hand-printed on two-color latex sheets placed in the space. A way to make a list of invisible names physically visible within days.