The exhibition ‘LES FEMMES / La Figura Femminile nell'Arte’ (LES FEMMES / The Female Figure in Art) will be inaugurated on Saturday 1 March 2025 at 5.30 p.m. at the GAMeC CentroArteModerna in Pisa (on the Lungarno Mediceo, 26). The exhibition, conceived, organised and curated by Massimiliano Sbrana, aims to give a brief but significant overview of the female figure as artists over time, but with particular attention to the contemporary world, have depicted and idealised it.
The exhibition will be open until Wednesday 12 March 2025.
Since the dawn of civilisation, the female figure has been a protagonist in human history: archaeologists have found numerous sculptures of female divinities, attributed to the organisation of tribes in a patriarchal style, from the Palaeolithic era. In many ancient civilisations, woman was the pivot of society, the custodian of the principle of life and fertility, and was represented as such.
For centuries, woman has been a founding element of art.
Starting with the representations and sculptures of prehistoric times, woman has been depicted in her many facets: as mother, saint, devil, lover and more. In the figurative arts, she has taken on a different symbolic guise over the centuries, in parallel with the evolution of artistic techniques and styles, changing aesthetic tastes and, no less important, the way women's role in society has been conceived.
For the painter, however, woman is first and foremost form. She is the symbol of the figuration of all time, the archetype of the human dimension, of its transparent depth, its glorious intellect and its absolute perfection, above any other living form. It is to the form of woman that the artist delivers the aesthetic judgement of art. An artist, moreover, often searches for his feminine ideal in the body of a woman and confronts it with his own inner shortcomings, so that he can define, through a personal interpretation, that half of himself that he wants to find in the object of his desire.
The iconography of the ‘woman in art’ has travelled a fascinating and symbolically significant path throughout history. From antiquity to the present day, the female image has been represented in different ways, each time reflecting both the cultural beliefs and ideals of beauty of each era.
On display, works by: Silvia Arrighetti, Lionella Bernasconi, Alberto Berti, Daniela Carta, Lucia Casarosa, Graziella Castelli, Eugenio Contatore, Monica A. D'Agord, Daniela D'Agosto, Antonella Eugeni, Antonella Favilli, Renato Guttuso, Stefania Hepeisen, Pierluigi Madrigali, Michela Marinai, Marco Mazzoni, Cinzia Lucia Morcaldo, Roberto Morreale, Antonio Nacci, Mario Pantani, Elsa Petrongolo, Silvia Pierucci Sapio, Giulio Sbrana, Letizia Serredi, Velichka Shankolova, Camilla Vallini.
Free entrance.
Opening Times: 10 a.m. - 12.30 p.m. 4 p.m. - 6.30 p.m. (weekdays); Closed Mondays. Special opening on Sunday 2 March 2025, 4-6.30 p.m.
