Α “Guarantee of Clustered Energy and Collective Promotion”: The Association of Greek Women Artists and its Exhibitions in the 50s and 60s

Artl@s Bulletin Volume 8 Issue 1 Women Artists Shows.Salons.Societies (1870s-1970s) Article 13 Α “Guarantee of Clustered Energy and Collective Promotion”: The Association of Greek Women Artists and its Exhibitions in the 50s and 60s Glafki Gotsi Hellenic Open University, Follow this and additional works at: https://docs.lib.purdue.edu/artlas Part of the Feminist, Gender, and Sexuality Studies Commons, Fine Arts Commons, History of Art, Architecture, and Archaeology Commons, History of Gender Commons, and the Women's History Commons Recommended Citation Gotsi, Glafki. "Α “Guarantee of Clustered Energy and Collective Promotion”: The Association of Greek Women Artists and its Exhibitions in the 50s and 60s." Artl@s Bulletin 8, no. 1 (2019): Article 13. This document has been made available through Purdue e-Pubs, a service of the Purdue University Libraries. Please contact for additional information. This is an Open Access journal. This means that it uses a funding model that does not charge readers or their institutions for access. Readers may freely read, download, copy, distribute, print, search, or link to the full texts of articles. This journal is covered under the CC BY-NC-ND license. W.A.S. (1870s-1970s) Α “Guarantee of Clustered Energy and Collective Promotion”: The Association of Greek Women Artists and its Exhibitions in the 1950s and 1960s Glafki Gotsi * Hellenic Open University Abstract Founded in Athens in 1954, the Association of Greek Women Artists organized a significant number of group exhibitions in Greece and abroad, where its members showed their work. This paper examines the context of the association’s all-women shows in the 1950s and 1960s and their meaning in relation to feminist cultural politics inside, but also beyond, national borders. More specifically, it analyzes the purposes of the collectivity, the critical reception of its exhibitions in Greece and their interpretation as female initiatives. It also explores the possible connections between the association and other Greek or foreign women’s groups. Résumé Fondée à Athènes en 1954, l’Association des femmes artistes grecques a organisé un nombre important d’expositions collectives de ses membres en Grèce et à l’étranger. Ce papier examine le contexte des expositions de l’association dans les années 1950 et 1960 et leur signification par rapport à la politique culturelle féministe dans le pays mais aussi au-delà des frontières nationales. Plus précisément, il étudie les objectifs du collectif, la réception critique de ses expositions en Grèce et leur interprétation comme initiatives de femmes. Il explore aussi les connexions possibles entre l’association et d’autres groupes de femmes, grecs ou étrangers. * Glafki Gotsi holds a PhD in the history of art from the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki. She has taught at several university departments. She is currently employed at the Hellenic Open University. Her publications and research interests focus mainly on issues of modern and contemporary art from the perspective of the history of women and gender. 197 ARTL@S BULLETIN, Vol. 8, Issue 1 (Spring 2019) Gotsi – The Association of Greek Women Artists The Association of Greek Women Artists (AGWA) 1 was formed in 1954 in Athens. Amongst its founding members were many women artists from different generations: some with a long history in the world of art, such as Thalia Flora-Karavia (1871-1960), Sofia Laskaridou (1878/18821965) and Charikleia Alexandridou-Stefanopoulou (1889-1963), others with a well-established reputation, like Maria Anagnostopoulou (ca. 18901971), Pinelopi Oikonomidou (1894-1963), Koula Bekiari (1905-1992) and Rea Leontaritou (19101992), and still others who had started their careers more recently, for example Efi Micheli (1906-1984), Lili Arlioti (1908-1979), Koula Marangopoulou (1913-1997) and Alex Mylona (1920-2016).2 According to its statute, the aims of the association were the study and collective confrontation of all art problems, the dissemination of art to the public, and, finally, the communication with similar art societies abroad and the exchange of exhibitions and other events that could promote Greek art outside the country and foreign art in Greece.3 Active until the end of the 1970s the AGWA was particularly effective in the 1950s and 1960s, when it pursued most of its goals: it organized a considerable number of exhibitions in Athens, in provincial towns and abroad, and it came into contact with groups of women artists in foreign countries. This article presents and discusses aspects of the AGWA’s history with emphasis on its exclusively female character, which was sustained in the rhetoric and the exhibitory policy of its members. In alignment with the demands of feminist historiography and theory to restore women artists 1 In Greek, Kallitechnikon Somateion Ellinidon. 2 The founding members, who signed the association’s statute in 1954, were 22 in total. A published list of the AGWA members comprises 70 names of women artists, founding members included. See Eirini Chariati, Εικαστικά τα εν Ελλάδι… 1940-2000 (χωρίς φόβο και πάθος) [Visual Arts in Greece…1940-2000 (without fear or passion)] (Athens: ‘sylloges’-Argyris Vournas, 2000), 79-84. 3 Ibid., 79. 4 Linda Nochlin, “Why Have There Been no Great Women Artists?”, in Woman in Sexist Society: Studies in Power and Powerlessness, eds. Vivian Gornick, Barbara Moran (New York: New American Library, 1971), 480-510; Ann Sutherland Harris, Linda Nochlin, Women Artists: 1550-1950 (Los Angeles: Los Angeles County Museum of Art, 1976); Roszika Parker, Griselda Pollock, Old Mistresses: Women, Art and Ideology (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1981); Griselda Pollock, Vision and Difference: Femininity, Feminism and Histories of Art (London, New York: Routledge, 1988). 5 Charis Scholinaki-Chelioti, Ελληνίδες Ζωγράφοι, 1800-1922 [Greek Women Painters, 1800-1922] (PhD dissertation, Athens: National and Kapodistrian University), 68, 383-384; Angela Dimitrakaki, “Elements of a Secret History: Women, Art and Gender in Modern Greece”, Third Text, no. 37 (1996): 68-69; Polyna Kosmadaki, Τίτσα ARTL@S BULLETIN, Vol. 8, Issue 1 (Spring 2019) to history and to critically scrutinize art practices and discourses,4 the purposes of the group and the reception of its shows are here examined as part of the history of all-women collectivities and the discussion about art created by women. The essay focuses on the AGWA’s activities in Greece in the 1950s and 1960s, and also considers its possible connections with female groups in other countries. The association’s orientation to not only a national, but also an international scene, proves particularly interesting, since it uncovers a series of contacts and exchanges among women from different parts of the world. From this point of view much more needs to be explored not only in Greece but also elsewhere. As it has become clear to me while studying the AGWA, its case is (...truncated)