Histoire d’E

Histoire d’E part 2 Between language and object

Curated by Paolo Cortese and Francesco Romano Petillo

Histoire d’E tells the stories of women, friendships, bonds and separations.

The show talks about how in the 1970s, female artists began writing their independent history, and of how the lack of interest in female art by the market at that time allowed them to experiment in full freedom.

Francesca Cataldi, a sculptor of the time, testifies: “The profound injustice we suffered at the time actually turned out to be a great opportunity, and from an historical perspective, it was our fortune."

Earlier in the 1970s, Mirella Bentivoglio, an Italian artist and curator, had already began forming exhibitions dedicated solely to women. Later, it was she who turned the spotlight on this generalised discrimination by proposing the exhibition “Materialisation of language” for the 1978 Venice Biennale comprising over 80 female artists from all over the world who worked predominantly with language and image. It became an historic exhibition within the art world, and still resonates today.

Histoire d’E borrows its title from Mirella’s London exhibition of 1988, and seeks to pay homage to this great and influential Italian artist and curator by presenting to the Athenian public many of the artists close to her, along with works by Mirella herself.

The exhibition is divided into two parts: the first focuses on the relationship between language and image, presenting works of Concrete Poetry and Visual Poetry and also documents experiments in the visualisation of sound. The second part, on the other hand, emphasizes research between language and object. A research arising from these women by conquering a cathartic process of liberalisation of their domestic dimension “which for many centuries was both their kingdom and prison” (M. Bentivoglio) 

In conjunction with our sister gallery, Lettera_E in Rome, a parallel exhibition opened on 10 Dicember.

ARTISTS: Mirella Bentivoglio, Francesca Cataldi, Nedda Guidi, Elisabetta Gut, Maria Lai, Rosanna Lancia, Gisella Meo, Patrizia Molinari, Renata Prunas, Anna Maria Sacconi, Alba Savoi, Maria Jole Serreli, Franca Sonnino