Women, Surrealism, and Abstraction

August 25, 2020 – July 31, 2021
Drawn exclusively from the Museum collection, Women, Surrealism, and Abstraction endeavors to look beyond typical art historical boundaries and to begin to lay claim to a more holistic and complex view of art history—one that includes parties left out because of aesthetic biases based on a system of privileged white male patrimony.

During the 20th century, art made by women was often overlooked or dismissed by museums, collectors, and art historians. An ironic side effect of this absence of attention was that it lessened the constraints and dictates of the marketplace for women, allowing for increased experimentation and the pursuit of a personal vision in ways often less available for their male counterparts.

Until more recently, women of color—especially Native American women—have rarely been included in art historical studies focusing on Surrealism and abstraction. In addition, artists who work in ceramics, fiber arts, photography, and printmaking, rather than painting and sculpture, are often left out of these studies as well. However, Surrealism and abstraction offered women a glimpse of a world in which creative activity and liberation from societal expectations co-existed, allowing them to embark on the difficult path to artistic freedom.

Also featured alongside the art are 16 poems written by women in the Cache Valley literary community. In the spirit of an exhibition celebrating women’s talent and creativity, we invited the women to choose an artwork from the exhibition and write a poem inspired by it. These Surrealist and abstract artworks provoke us to wonder and see in new ways. The same is true of the poems, which offer glimpses into the poets’ personal responses to the art. In this way, the pairings of words and imagery bring the women in conversation with each other, a dialogue that reaches across art forms and across time.