the hidden world of women modernists

Here at wonder | wander | world we love visiting museums of modern art. But as Filipino artists we notice that the museums present us with a stable of artists who are mostly white men, with a tiny smattering of white women. Frida Kahlo boldly waves her native colours against the whitewashed background, but there are others who were as bold and influential, but not as universally known.

Baya Mahieddine, Femmes et Oiseaux, 1975.

Baya Mahieddine was an Algerian artist, born Fatima Haddad in 1931. When she was eleven, a Frenchwoman called Marguerite Caminat took her in as a servant and later adopted her, supporting her art and education. Caminat was well-connected with the art world through her good friend Joan Míro, and with her help, when Baya was sixteen she was able to exhibit her art for the first time in Paris.

Baya Mahieddine, Femme robe jaune cheveux bleu, 1947

Picasso invited her to work with him after seeing her exhibition, and she is said to have inspired his Women of Algiers series. André Breton called her a Surrealist; other painters called her an "indigene" or "naïve" artist like Henri Rousseau or Hector Hyppolite. But Baya never submitted to the labels of Western art. Her work was Algerian, and more than that, it was Baya's.

Baya Mahieddine, Femme assis fond vert, 1998

Born in Yangzhou, China in 1895, Pan Yuliang was orphaned at 14 and sold into prostitution by her uncle. She became the second wife of a wealthy customs official and moved with him to Shanghai, where she studied painting in the Shanghai Art Academy, as one of its first female students.

Pan Yuliang, self-portrait, 1939 

The Shanghai Art Academy also pioneered the teaching of Western painting techniques. Among her still lifes and landscapes, Pan Yuliang painted vivid portraits of nude women. Society tried to shame both her and her headmaster Liu Haisu for their supposed immorality, but she persisted. 

Pan Yuliang, Woman by the Window, 1940

When she graduated the academy in Shanghai, she went to Lyons and Paris to study. In 1925, she won a coveted scholarship to study at the Academia di Belle Arti in Rome. She won the Gold Prize for her work at the Roman International Art Exhibition in 1926. She returned to China to teach at the Shanghai Art Academy in 1929 and the National Central University in Nanjing, and gave five solo exhibitions between 1929 and 1936.

Pan Yuliang, Nu assis au peignoir rouge, 1955

She combined the graphic, illustrative style of Chinese painting with the bold colours and impressionistic strokes of Western art. She never backed down from her fascination with the female body and would paint other women of colour as well. Hostility toward her and her work, as well as the rising of the Communist Party, speeded her return to Paris in 1937. She taught at the École des Beaux-Arts and would remain in Paris until her death.

Pan Yuliang, African Woman, 1972

Remedios Varo was a Spanish-Mexican Surrealist painter whose work was dark, otherworldly and dripping with symbolism. She loved Heironymous Bosch, Francisco Goya and the work of her fellow Surrealists and friends, Leonora Carrington and Max Ernst.

Remedios Varo, Alchemy or The Useless Science, 1955

Varo was skeptical about her home religion of Catholicism, and like many of her fellow Surrealists was fascinated by metaphysics. When she was a child her father encouraged her to read science fiction, mysticism and philosophy.  She created her first painting at twelve years old and entered the Escuela de Bellas Artes in Madrid when she was only fifteen.

Remedios Varo, Roulotte, 1956

Varo's life was filled with upheaval and political unrest. She was an activist in the turmoil of the Spanish Civil War, was imprisoned with her partner in France for their political beliefs, and shortly after their incarceration ended, had to flee Paris ahead of the German invasion in 1941. They settled in Mexico, where Varo said she found "the tranquillity I have always longed for."

Remedios Varo, Premonition, 1953

Her art is mysterious and whimsical, but with a darkness that hangs over the beauty like a threat. Her fascination with spirituality and her strange structures and figures with flowing robes have a Catholic-flavoured mysticism. 

Remedios Varo, Ascension al Monte Analogo, 1960

We were delighted to learn about these amazing women and to read how many more were living and working in their circles. We look forward to discovering more groundbreaking female artists and hope this inspires more people to discover favourites of their own!