Frieze Masters focus: Rediscovering Women Artists

This year’s edition of Frieze Masters presents Spotlight, a special section made up of solo presentations of the pioneers of avant-garde art from all around the world dedicated to women artists. Camille Morineau (co-founder and Research Director of AWARE – Archives of Women Artists, Research, and Exhibitions) and AWARE have been invited to curate this section of the Masters, celebrating its 10th anniversary.

AWARE is an association which has been working, since its creation in 2014, to shed light on women artists of the 19th and 20th centuries. Its primary mission is to champion women artists from around the world through the dissemination of free and bilingual content ((French/English) on the association’s website. “The primary ambition of AWARE is to rewrite the history of art on an equal footing. Placing women on the same level as their male counterparts and making their works known is long oveerdue.” The section, curated in collaboration with Matylda Taszycka, Head of AWARE’s Research Programme, and Eléonore Besse, Research Programmes Assistant, presents major modern masters as well as highlights the work of artists who are still little known, showing that galleries are today at the forefront of the rediscovery of, and research on, women artists. The group of Artists featured include Margit Szilvtzky, Nike Davies-Okundaye, Surrealist pioneer Leonor Fini, Sylvia Snowden, Wook-kyung Choi and Sonia Balassanian.

“There is a desire to grow and diversify collections, precisely because they haven’t had enough representation of women artists or diverse artists and artists of colour,” says Frieze Masters Director Nathan Clements-Gillespie. “A fair is such a melting pot and a meeting place that it’s important to champion these themes, so that all the attention and press attention that surrounds a fair can then help spread that message.”

Spotlight brings together 26 artists born between 1900 and 1951 presenting half a century of art history in a new light and exploring practices linked to specific artistic movements and currents and more singular styles and techniques. Through this series of solo presentations, AWARE seeks to highlight the singularity of each artist, whilst outlining their common commitments. While some stands question the way in which women artists deconstruct the body, rethinking its representation through drawing, collage, and photomontage, others present a range of different types of abstract, geometric, or gestural art, even going beyond pictorial practice.
«We are honoured to be the curators of Frieze Masters Spotlight 2022. This is a prestigious and particularly special partnership this year, as the section will be exclusively dedicated to women artists. This is a unique opportunity to increase the visibility and presence of women artists whose artistic careers have not been fully celebrated and it is in line with AWARE’s primary ambition to rewrite the history of art in a more equal way » says Camille Morineau, AWARE’s co-founder and Research Director.

Nigerian artist Nike Davies-Okundaye, known as “Mama Nike” in her home country, is an Adire batik and textile artist as well as a social entrepreneur and a well-known philanthropist championing the cause of the neglected Nigerian rural women using art as a tool to accomplish female empowerment. She received no formal art education but she learned textile-making skills from her great-grandmother, developing her own unique style and technique in textile design and becoming an expert in “Adire” textile making, dyeing, weaving, painting, and embroidery. Davies-Okundaye – pictured below – had her first solo show in 1968 and has been promoting the art of traditional Nigerian textiles globally ever since. The works on show at Frieze Masters highlight the artist’s signature textile pieces from the 1960s and 1980s.

Korean artist Wook-Kyung Choi was an abstract expressionist painter influenced by both Korean informal art and American Abstract Expressionism. Among the many artists practising abstract painting in South Korea in the 1980s, in her powerful paintings you can trace both elements of the American Abstract Expressionist movement and the the controlled formalism of the Korean calligraphy that she used to practise.

Another remarkable display of the Spotlight section is the solo presentation by Surrealist pioneer Leonor Fini featured at Loeve&Co Gallery, whose booth is covered by a special wallpaper created for this show and showcasing a collection of waste on a black background. The works on display range from 1940 to 1960 and are organised according to different themes: eroticism, skeletons, macabre celebrations, multiple love and gender fluidity. At the front of the showcase a real size 1973 mannequin introduces the visitors to the highlights of the display including the ambiguous portrait of Lino Invernizzi 194-5). Painted in a Renaissance style and set against a dark background, the sitter’s confident pose and eroticism are enhanced by a cascade of silk and velvet and punctuated by the petals of a rose in the foreground.

Spotlight Section Galleries
Ab-Anbar, Tehran, London Sonia Balassanian
acb, Budapest Margit Szilvitzky
Apalazzogallery, Brescia Lucia Marcucci
Galerie Bernard Bouche, Paris Marthe Wéry
Cecilia Brunson Projects, London Katie van Scherpenberg
Ceysson & Bénétière, Paris, Saint-Etienne, Geneva, New York, Luxembourg, Lyon
DAG, New Delhi, Mumbai, New York Madhvi Parekh 
Dirimart, Istanbul Fahrelnissa Zeid
Einspach Fine Art & Photography, Budapest Orshi Drozdik
England & Co, London Anne Bean
The Gallery of Everything, London Sister Gertrude Morgan
Henrique Faria, New York Susana Rodríguez
Eric Firestone Gallery, New York, East Hampton Pat Passlof
Galerie A&R Fleury, Paris Geneviève Claisse
Frittelli Arte Contemporanea, Florence Lucia Marcucci
Herlitzka + Faria, Buenos Aires Susana Rodríguez
Alison Jacques, London Ljiljana Blazevska
Galerie Knoell, Basel Dadamaino
kó, Lagos Nike Davies-Okundaye
Kukje Gallery, Seoul, Busan Wook-kyung Choi
Loeve&Co, Paris Leonor Fini
Pace Gallery, New York, Los Angeles, London, Hong Kong, Geneva, Seoul, Palo Alto, Palm Beach, East Hampton Mary Corse
Franklin Parrasch Gallery, New York Sylvia Snowden
Almine Rech, Paris, Brussels, London, New York, Shanghai Vivian Springford
Richard Saltoun Gallery, London Romany Eveleigh
Stephenson art, London Daniela Vinopalová
Cristin Tierney Gallery, New York Mary Lucier
Galerie Jocelyn Wolff, Romainville Colette Brunschwig