From Saturday, February 28th to Wednesday, March 11th, 2026, at the GAMeC CentroArteModerna in Pisa (at number 26 on the Lungarno Mediceo), the exhibition "LES FEMMES / The Female Figure in Art" will be held. Conceived and curated by Massimiliano Sbrana, it aims to provide a brief but significant journey through the female figure as artists have depicted and idealized it over time, but with particular attention to contemporary art.
The female presence has accompanied the history of humanity since its beginnings, but what is striking today is how this presence, once inscribed in archaic symbols and ritual figures, continues to transform and generate new readings. The first testimonies —the famous Paleolithic figures, often interpreted as emblems of fertility or generative power— are not only archaeological finds: they are the sign of an imaginary in which women embodied the primary force of life and social order.
With the passing of the centuries, the female image has become one of the great engines of art. Each age has constructed its own idea of woman, attributing to her changing roles: mother, spiritual guide, temptation, muse, ideal body, political body. The figurative arts have continually rewritten this presence, modeling it according to the aesthetic codes of the time and, above all, according to the way society defined the feminine.
For many artists of the past, women were first and foremost a form to be contemplated and interpreted: an archetype through which to measure the beauty, fragility, strength, and complexity of human beings. The female figure thus became a place of projection, an ideal that the artist sought to achieve or understand, often intertwining desire, introspection and aesthetic research.
Contemporaneity, however, has radically changed the picture. Today, the image of women is no longer just a subject to be represented, but a critical territory in which identity, politics, memory, and the body are intertwined. Female artists —and many artists — question the feminine as a space of autonomy, resistance, redefinition. Techniques multiply: photography, video, performance, digital languages, participatory practices. The image is no longer an immobile icon, but a process, an open field in which stereotypes are discussed, narratives are dismantled, new possibilities are built.
In this sense, the path of “woman in art” is not a simple sequence of representations, but a history of profound transformations. From the first votive figures to the most experimental research of the present, the feminine continues to be a place of questioning and renewal, capable of reflecting cultural changes and anticipating future ones. It is an ever-evolving dialogue, which today more than ever opens up to plural, hybrid, free perspectives.
On display, therefore, are the works of: Pietro Annigoni, Silvia Arrighetti, Troy Argyros, Stefano Ballantini, Alberto Berti, Michele Bracciotti, Monica D'Agord, Antonina Chaban, Daniela Carta, Domenico Cantatore, Graziella Castelli, Paolo Citarella, Sylvia Garro, Anna Maria Guarnieri, Renato Guttuso, Mauro Martin, Luigi Norelli, Silvia Pierucci Sapio, Lisandro Ramacciotti, Marialuisa Sabato Alessandro Volpi, Tono Zancanaro
Free entry.
Opening Times: Tuesday to Saturday 10 am-12.30/4 pm-6.30
Special opening Sunday 1st and 8th March 2026 with hours 4 pm-6.30 pm
Exhibition opening: Saturday, February 28th at 5:00 PM.
