The title The Other Half of the Sky borrows the Maoist saying that involves the female world, but only as a workforce, not as gender equality or equality of rights, which are still partly denied today. Moreover, with L’Altra Metà dell’Avanguardia (The Other Half of the Avant-Garde), Lea Vergine sought to give Caesar what belongs to Caesar—that is, to restore art to the female factor. Many women—companions, wives, or lovers of artists—possessed great artistic abilities, yet were stifled by the male artist beside them. An emblematic case is Camille Claudel, deprived of recognition for her sculptural talents and later confined to an asylum by her brother, with the complicity of her lover, the sculptor Rodin. Or Dora Maar in relation to Picasso. And also Berthe Morisot and Jeanne Hébuterne: the former, sister-in-law and model of Manet, and the latter, wife of Modigliani—both capable artists who for years were considered minor figures.
The history of women in art is already present in our Renaissance with Sofonisba Anguissola, Marietta Robusti (La Tintoretta), and Artemisia Gentileschi—women raised in their fathers’ workshops or within enlightened families. Today, times have changed and women artists are global stars such as Marina Abramović, Tracey Emin, Dana Schutz, Cecily Brown, Ana Mendieta, Louise Bourgeois, Barbara Kruger, Cady Noland, Isa Genzken, and Berlinde De Bruyckere, to name just a few. This demonstrates that the other half of the sky has broken through the glass ceiling that once kept women confined beneath the starry mantle. It has finally been understood that although artistic language may be reduced to common signs or forms, born from materials used in a neutral way and shaped according to how they are manipulated, this neutral language changes profoundly depending on gendered capability.
It is undeniable that female sensitivity differs from male sensitivity. One need only consider that being a woman includes the possibility of procreation, while the man is “acted upon,” occupied, by his paternity—something he must learn, as it is not natural to him. I also recall that Carl G. Jung himself maintained that man carries within his unconscious a part of the feminine Anima, while woman possesses a part of the masculine Animus. “Jung considered the process of the soul one of the sources of creative ability”—almost a psychic compensation between uncertain sensitivities. Thus, in female artistic production, a whole series of data and sensitivities close to male psychology also come into play.
In this exhibition, we are concerned with an artistic analysis of the works and chosen subjects. Clara Brasca moves from a world connected to Winckelmann’s discoveries about Greek classicism—“noble simplicity and quiet grandeur,” as he defined it—linked to the Neoclassicism of Canova and Anton Raphael Mengs. Claudia Buttignol displays an expressive, expressionist-like irruption of gesture, here driven within the color red, denoting a dangerous, blood-like intensity and attraction. Massimiliana Sonego describes herself as moving within a shattered mirror that gives form to a distorted yet integral vision, close to the dreamlike quality of her works.
On March 8th, International Women’s Day, we wished to commemorate it in this way: as a demonstrative training ground for a feminine mode of artistic practice.
