Female self portraits (Florence, 12/17/10-1/30/11)

Autoritratte (Female self portraits)
“Artiste di capriccioso e destrissimo ingegno” (Lady artists of inspired and most dextrous ingenuity)
Florence, Uffizi Gallery, Sala delle Reali Poste, from Dec. 17, 2010 until Jan. 30, 2011

"Eighty female self portraits – sixty from the Vasarian Corridor and from the repositories and the twenty new ones brought in for the exhibition – lead us to reflect on the meagre 7% represented by the self portraits by women, lost amidst the vast Uffizi collection as a whole, now numbering 1,700 artists’ self portraits.
It was extensive reflections on these figures that triggered the research that has been translated into a chronological display itinerary which – in addition to fostering an interpretation through names and numbers of the historically subordinate condition of women artists, at length confined to areas that limited their expressive capacities, at least in comparison to the opportunities offered to men – also led to the inclusion of portraits of female artists from the seventeenth century up to the present, selecting works variously illustrative of quality, naivety, academism or fashions, but frequently also strokes of genius.

Strikingly, the Uffizi collection numbers some of the female artists who were acknowledged as worthy of mention between the sixteenth and the eighteenth century. A few who managed to emerge at that time, a considerable number fully recognised today, and a few to be restored to the light of lost identity or fame, as in the case of Maria Hadfield Cosway, whose youthful self portrait has recently been identified in the portrait of an unknown young lady.
Starting with the mirror self portraits which, from the sixteenth to the eighteenth century tended to be admired because apparently produced “by the brush of a man of outstanding talent rather than that of a woman”, we arrive – also through the use of the new media – at the attempt at mimesis and deconstruction of the identity that traversed the twentieth century, rendering the image no longer a duplication of the model but rather its equivalent.
The ‘disrespectful’ number of contemporary female portraits, which failed to reflect the actual evolution of the arts in the twentieth century, led us to request new self portraits from women artists in Italy and abroad of our own times – also with a view to updating and to the future of the Collection; they responded with enthusiastic and generous donations. Carla Accardi, Vanessa Beecroft, Mirella Bentivoglio, Nadia Berkani, Antonella Bussanich, Lynne Curran, Berlinde de Bruyckere, Niki de Saint Phalle, Marilù Eustachio, Esther Ferrer, Giosetta Fioroni, Jenny Holzer, Yayoi Kusama, Ketty La Rocca, Lucia Marcucci, Elisa Montessori, Patti Smith, Tinca Stegovec, Alison Watt and Francesca Woodman. The twenty new self portraits hence assume a symbolic role of offsetting, exemplifying the myriad shifts of thought and style which, through both new and traditional media – painting, sculpture, drawing, tapestry, photography, visual poetry and video – made the just-closed century so fertile and did so precisely through the endeavours of a host of determined and committed women, eminently capable of expressing their creative ingenuity."

* Article by Valeria Ronzani [Il Sole 24 Ore]