Abstract

ESQUIVEL, Patrícia. Women Artists in the Age of Reason: Art and Criticism in the 1960’s in Portugal. Ex aequo [online]. 2010, n.21, pp.143-160. ISSN 0874-5560.

This article discusses the new status of women artists in Portugal in the 1960’s based on the works of the most significant artists (Paula Rego, Helena Almeida and Lourdes Castro) and on their appraisal by the critics. A real transformation occurs: the attitude of these women changes and the barriers that used to confine them to a particular type of art - female art - are broken. At the critic’s level, the paternalistic and discriminatory attitude is overcome, and the turn is to more impartial criteria and less gender prejudice. The article establishes the contrast between the female art, classified by critics in the first half of the twentieth century as naive, lyrical, sensitive and clearly solar, and an art of reflexive and experimental nature, made in the years of 1960’s by women with critical and conceptual ability.

Keywords : Women Artists (in Portugal); Art Criticism (in Portugal); 1960’s; Paula Rego; Helena Almeida.

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