Has the Prado illustrated the very misogyny it has sought to expose by focusing on works by men rather than celebrating those by women? Sam Jones reports on the controversy around its latest exhibition.
The last face that meets visitors to the Prado’s first post-lockdown exhibition is one of the very few that appears to look the spectator squarely in the eye.
The cool gaze of the Portuguese-Spanish artist María Roësset – free of guilt, shame, saccharine virtue or predatory intent – comes as something of a relief after the sanctimonious, salacious and often sad series of pictures that precede it.
To reach Roësset, a gauntlet must be run: of women depicted in art variously as fallen, proud, mad, naked, and one even presented as femme fatale, her face partially bathed in red light and a cigarette clasped in a holder between her fingers.
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The exhibition, whose English title is Uninvited Guests, explores how artworks bought and celebrated by the Spanish state between 1833 and 1931 treated women as people and artists... Keep reading on The Guardian
The last face that meets visitors to the Prado’s first post-lockdown exhibition is one of the very few that appears to look the spectator squarely in the eye.
The cool gaze of the Portuguese-Spanish artist María Roësset – free of guilt, shame, saccharine virtue or predatory intent – comes as something of a relief after the sanctimonious, salacious and often sad series of pictures that precede it.
To reach Roësset, a gauntlet must be run: of women depicted in art variously as fallen, proud, mad, naked, and one even presented as femme fatale, her face partially bathed in red light and a cigarette clasped in a holder between her fingers.
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The exhibition, whose English title is Uninvited Guests, explores how artworks bought and celebrated by the Spanish state between 1833 and 1931 treated women as people and artists... Keep reading on The Guardian