Germany's National Gallery is celebrating 100 years since women were admitted to the Berlin Academy of Arts. An exhibition is being held of works by female artists who defied the odds to produce art in the years before this.
ADVERTISEMENTGermany's National Gallery in Berlin is celebrating 100 years since women were admitted to the Berlin Academy of Arts.
An exhibition is being held of works by female artists who defied the odds to produce art in the years before this, to mark the anniversary.
Many were part of the movement for equal rights in Germany, where women also won the right to vote in 1919.
Ralph Gleis, head of the gallery, said: "It is 100 years ago, in 1919, that women could take up a place to study at the Berlin Academy Of Arts for the first time. But we looked at our collection and noticed that there were female artists before this time.
"How did they get prominence? How did they [succeed] in getting their works into the collection of [the national gallery]? And how should you assess these paintings today?"
The exhibition – Fighting for Visibility: Women Artists in the National Gallery before 1919 – covers various styles and formats, emphasising that there is no such thing as "women's art".
Curator Yvette Deseyve said a visitor who looks at the pieces in the exhibition without reading the descriptions might not notice that they were all made by women.
She explained: "There isn't such a thing as a typical female way of looking at things. There isn't such a thing as women's art. They were working just like their male counterparts with the same sorts of styles and formats."
The exhibition runs from October 11 to March 8, 2020.