Towards a Poetics of Gender. Women Artists in Spain (1804-1939)

More information

Artwork: Composition avec tache rouge (1916) by María Blanchard
Exhibition: Towards a Poetics of Gender. Women Artists in Spain (1804-1939)
Venue: IAACC Pablo Serrano, Zaragoza / Museo de Bellas Artes de Valencia
Date: 22 March – 19 June 2022 / 30 June – 18 September, 2022
Curators: Concepción Lomba, Jaime Brihuega, Magdalena Illán and Rafael Gil


The work Composition avec tache rouge has been included in the exhibition Towards a Poetics of Gender. Women Artists in Spain (1804-1939), organised by IAACC Pablo Serrano from Zaragoza in conjunction with Consorci de Museus de la Comunitat Valenciana.

The show came about as a result of the activities of an R&D and innovation project called Women Artists in Spain, 1804-1939, aimed at exploring the key role played by women artists in the development of art in Spain in the period in question, throwing light not only on the most renowned practitioners but also on others whose work had remained in the shadows until now.

For the exhibition, the BBVA Collection has loaned one of the masterpieces in its holdings, a mother-and-child scene painted by María Blanchard, widely viewed as a key player in
. Painted in 1916, the year she moved to Paris, the work is a superb example of her cubist period (1913-1919) and evinces her mastery of composition and colour. As one can appreciate in this work, Blanchard distances herself from the coldest versions of
, taking a highly personal approach to her subject matters that imbued her paintings with greater warmth and sensibility.