Association of female artists in Austria

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Entrance to the VBKÖ

The Association of Austrian Women Artists (VBKÖ) was founded in 1910 and shortly afterwards opened its location in Vienna's first district, where it can still be found today. Historically, the association belonged to the early female artist movements and had pioneering status: It carried out lobbying work for women in order to improve their interests in artistic, economic and educational terms, to increase their representation and to enter into international collaborations. Since then, (international) exhibition and event activities with a feminist orientation have been ongoing.

Complexity and contradictions

Organizations such as the VBKÖ demonstrate the complexity and contradictions of contemporary feminist historiography: Here, the emancipatory history of the artistic women's movement, which goes back to the time of imperialism and which can still be claimed in an official art historiography, meets the history of the Collaboration with the National Socialist regime. The gaps in knowledge with regard to one's own history, historiography and research resulting from historical and internal breaks in the association are more easily forgotten not only National Socialist, but also class-specific and colonial entanglements in the association.

One of the greatest challenges is therefore to further develop structures and initiate processes that allow historical narratives to be re-examined over and over again, processes of reflection to continue and this knowledge to be made public and discussed. The VBKÖ positions itself as a place that maintains contemporary, feminist, artistic agendas, offers a space for experiments and promotes political and activist work in order to create a new, lively connection between historical debate and contemporary, queer, feminist art production.

Historical beginnings

The aim of the VBKÖ was to improve the interests of women artists in artistic, economic and training-related terms and to increase their representation. She succeeded in doing this, for example, by organizing specially designed annual exhibitions for members. Under the direction of the first president Olga Brand-Krieghammer , the VBKÖ organized a retrospective exhibition in the founding year 1910 to make the art of women visible ( Sofonisba Anguissola , Rosa Bonheur , Olga Boznańska , Angelika Kauffmann , Berthe Morisot , Elisabeth Vigée-Lebrun ...) . This undertaking is viewed by the feminist exhibition discourse as a historic pioneering achievement.

“A similar exhibition has not yet been held on the continent, both in terms of type and completeness. The basic idea of ​​this exhibition is: to give the public an overview of what women have created and are creating in the field of fine arts, and to bring new ideas to the artists. "

- Preface to the 1st catalog of the 1st exhibition of the VBKÖ "The Art of Women" in the Secession, Vienna, from November-December 1910, print 1, archive of the VBKÖ.

Names such as Tina Blau , Marie Egner , Helene Funke , Olga Wisinger-Florian are associated with the VBKÖ . Some of them were actively involved as members, were invited to exhibitions or were corresponding members, such as Käthe Kollwitz.

In 1912 she rented her own exhibition and work space, creating an important prerequisite for herself to be able to act completely freely and independently in the exhibition, regardless of the dependence on other artists' associations. With this step, the members also gave their autonomy a local representation for the first time.

The VBKÖ joins the long tradition of historical female artists' associations in the Euro-American area: for example, the Society of Female Artists London founded in 1855 , the Association of Berlin Artists and Art Friends founded in 1867 , the Société de l'Union des Femmes founded in 1881 Peintres et Sculpteurs (Society of Women Painters and Sculptors Union) in Paris or the National Association of Women Artists, which has existed in the USA since 1889 .

take! make! activate! VBKÖ archive

The take! make! activate! VBKÖ archive, which was compiled by women artists, lived through and changed, like the VBKÖ itself, through the history of the last days of imperialism, the overthrow of the Habsburg monarchy and the First World War, Austro-Fascism, National Socialism, but also through the progressive ones Art movements in Austria up to the current EU enlargements and the austerity measures of public subsidies.

The take! make! activate! VBKÖ archive contains a significant inventory of old files and collections from the time the VBKÖ was founded in 1910 to 2005 and provides an overview of the history of the VBKÖ through the almost complete exhibition catalogs of the VBKÖ. There are archival materials in 632 files, printing and work units (22 running meters excluding work collection) available for inspection.

The inventory of the archive (compiled by Sabine Harik) can be found in the expanded “Finding aid for the Association of Austrian Women Artists” (Ed .: VBKÖ, Rudolfine Lackner) and can be downloaded for the purpose of your own preparatory research. The archive is only accessible by prior agreement.

literature

  • Julie Marie Johnson: The Memory Factory: The Forgotten Women Artists of Vienna 1900. Purdue University Press, 2012, ISBN 978-1-55753-613-6 .
  • Marie-Sophie Brendinger: The Association of Austrian Women Artists. Studies on their role in the history of art and women in Europe. Thesis . Vienna 2011.
  • Rudolfine Lackner (Ed.): 100 Years / Years VBKÖ Festschrift. VBKÖ, Vienna 2011, ISBN 978-3-200-02201-0 .
  • Megan Marie Brandow-Faller: An Art Of Their Own: Reinventing Frauenkunst In The Female Academies And Artist Leagues Of Late-Imperial And First Republic Austria, 1900–1930. Dissertation ., Georgetown University, Washington DC 2010. online at: repository.library.georgetown.edu
  • Rudolfine Lackner: Institutional Activisms. In: n.paradoxa. International Feminist Art Journal. Ed. Katy Deepwell, Vol. 23 on Activist Art, 2009, ISSN  1461-0434 , pp. 48-55.
  • Rudolfine Lackner (Ed.): Names Are Shaping Up Nicely! Gendered Nomenclature in Art, Language, Law, and Philosophy. VBKÖ, Vienna 2008, ISBN 978-3-200-01425-1 .
  • Rudolfine Lackner, VBKÖ (Hrsg.): The finding aid for the association of female artists in Austria. VBKÖ, Vienna 2006, ISBN 3-200-00550-5 .
  • Julie Marie Johnson: The Art Of The Woman: Women's Art Exhibitions in Fin-de-siecle Vienna. Ph.D. diss., University of Chicago, 1998.
  • Julie Marie Johnson: Make-up and women's art. Constructions of female aesthetics around the exhibition "The Art of Women", 1910. In: Lisa Fischer, Emil Brix (Ed.): The women of Viennese modernism. R. Oldenbourg Verlag, Munich 1997, ISBN 3-486-56290-8 , pp. 167-178.
  • Julie Marie Johnson: From Brocades to Silks and Powders. Women's Art Exhibitions and the Formation of a Gendered Aesthetic in Fin-de-siècle Vienna. In: Austrian history yearbook. Volume 28, Minneapolis 1997, pp. 269-292.
  • Sabine Plakolm-Forsthuber: Artists in Austria 1897–1938. Painting, sculpture, architecture. Vienna 1994, ISBN 3-85452-122-7 .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ " Inventory Archive " (pdf; 2.5 MB)