So many well-known names of men who have become canon - and so many gaps: When the painter Sibylle Zeh picked up "Reclam's Artist Lexicon" a few years ago and painted over all of the around five thousand entries dedicated to male artists and their work with white paint, only 169 items remained.

In the documentary "Lost Women Art: A Forgotten Piece of Art History" by Susanne Radelhof, which can be seen on Arte, the artist shows this gesture of crossing out, fading out and making invisible, which subversively reflects the interaction with female artists.

And blatantly shows: Art history as we - still - know it is above all a great narrative made up of success stories by men.

Ursula Scheer

Editor in the features section.

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    Why is that so? Why are only five percent of the works presented in the permanent collections of museums by women? Asks the documentary filmmaker. Art critic and former FAZ editor Julia Voss replied that there weren't that many female artists. There were definitely not as few as the selection in overview works and collections would lead you to believe.

    With her research, Susanne Radelhof wants to reveal the mechanisms that, even during their lifetime, pushed successful female artists to the edge of perception or into oblivion - such as the French Élisabeth Chaplin, who painted in the style of the Nabis in Florence, the Russian avant-gardist Natalia Goncharova, or the New Objectivity close Berlin painter Lotte Laserstein.

    The documentation ranges from impressionism to media and action art of the 1960s: from Berthe Morisot, born in 1841, who was only incidentally the wife of Édouard Manet's younger brother, to the feminist performance provocateur Valie Export, who was born in 1940 can even look back in front of the camera.

    Glorious comebacks

    Recognized, noted and honored today are both the first and the last in the series of those presented, which reveals a flaw in the concept of the two-parter: from today's perspective, at least partially with the exceptions to confirm the rule. Female stars of the art world such as Niki de Saint Phalle, Marina Abramović and Pipilotti Rist adorn the intro; and still very few of those presented below have been completely forgotten. On the contrary, there is a late and glorious comeback with the surrealist Leonora Carrington and a spectacular rediscovery with Hilma af Klint, a pioneer of abstraction.

    The required rethinking has long been underway. This is demonstrated by auctions in large auction houses (most recently “Women in Art” at Christie's) as well as shows in renowned museums (currently “Elles font l'abstraction” on abstract female painters in the Center Pompidou). Publications, initiatives - the film presents one in Florence - and acquisitions document the growing interest in the female side of the avant-garde, whose all-too-well-known protagonists have unbroken market value, but no longer have any surprises in store. Nevertheless: The top ten of the most highly traded contemporary artists are all male, and in the ranking of the “most important” living artists, which is represented by the “art compass”, which records the response in the art world,Only Cindy Sherman and Pipilotti Rist made it to the top in 2020.

    More than muses

    While at the end of the 19th century the path to an academic art education was blocked for women, the passive role of the muse was repeatedly forced upon them later on.

    In the first part, "Lost Women Art", with Suzanne Valadon, brings a woman into the limelight, who was far more than a half-world creature from Montmartre and a model by Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec.

    The self-taught nude painting reveals a new kind of female view of female bodies, which makes the change of perspective obvious.

    The filmmaker continues to follow this trail in the work of Helene Funke, who was born in Chemnitz in 1869, and whose self-portraits testify to an impressive ruthlessness.

    Once shown side by side with greats like André Derain in Paris or next to Oskar Kokoschka in Vienna, their work has long been suspected.

    There are many reasons for the veil of oblivion falling over women artists: patriarchal norms in life, conservative institutions in the art business, less aggressive self-marketing, retrospective marginalization by art historians, withdrawal from frustration, political persecution until death, ideological maladjustment.

    With two exceptions, Susanne Radelhof only lets experts speak, including curators of Tate and Tate Modern in London and Ingrid Pfeiffer from the Schirn Kunsthalle in Frankfurt, but also the collector Hans Schöner, who is responsible for the work of Elfriede Lohse, who was murdered under the Nazi regime -Wächtler uses and wants to see her as an artist, not as a sacrifice. With Kiki Kogelnik, the informative and entertaining documentary jumps to New York at the height of Pop Art and introduces a woman who, with scissors in hand, dissects female role models from fashion and advertising, which are no less oppressive today than they did then .

    The male-dominated art history cannot simply be replenished with women, it has to be dismantled, says Tate director Frances Morris.

    Susanne Radelhof's documentary collage is an excerpt from this.

    “Lost Women Art: A forgotten piece of art history”

    on this Wednesday, June 9th, at 9:55 pm on Arte