We Will Go Right Up to the Sun. Female Pioneers of Geometric Abstraction

The Mercedes-Benz Art Collection is supporting the exhibition ‘We Will Go Right Up to the Sun. Female Pioneers of Geometric Abstraction’ with four loans from its collection.

About the exhibition: In winter 2024, the Wilhelm-Hack-Museum is focusing on the significance of female artists in the development of geometric abstraction in the 20th century with Wir werden bis zur Sonne gehen. Pionierinnen der geometrischen Abstraktion [We Will Go Right Up to the Sun. Female Pioneers of Geometric Abstraction].

Even today, names such as Wassily Kandinsky, Kazimir Malevich, or Piet Mondrian are predominantly associated with non-representational painting after World War I. Correcting this one-sided narrative is a key approach of the exhibition project. In reality, artists like Lyubov Popova, Sophie Taeuber-Arp, or Sonia Delaunay were pioneers in the development of a geometric-abstract visual language. From the 1940s onwards, artists such as Verena Loewensberg, Aurélie Nemours, or Vera Molnár decisively contributed to the advancement of non-representational art.

Similar developments can be observed beyond the cultural centers of the Western world, for instance, in Central and Latin America. Here, among others, artists like Lygia Clark in Brazil, Lydi Prati in Argentina, or Loló Soldevilla in Cuba developed a unique constructive-abstract visual language.

The exhibition shows female artists worldwide were actively involved in significant exhibitions throughout their lives, contributed to the theoretical discourse, left behind a unique oeuvre, and of-ten developed ideas more radically than their male counterparts. The Wilhelm-Hack-Museum aims to contribute to the revision of the male-dominated perspective on abstraction and the growing interest in recent years on the achievements of women artists in non-representational art from 1914 to the 1970s. (Wilhelm-Hack-Museum, Ludwigshafen am Rhein)