Back in 2018, working on a summer issue of See All This entitled 99 geniale vrouwen in de kunst (‘99 women of genius in art’), we were both shocked and delighted by what we discovered. Shocked because we had never realised just how poorly women are treated in the art world. And delighted because we discovered just how much stunning work has been done by women artists, out of the limelight and always in infinite isolation.

For women artists, the history of art is chronicle of exclusion. Hardly any of them has been granted a place in the canon, a place in the art market, a place with a gallery or even a place of their own to work. The reason? Their lack of talent in male eyes.

In the first editions of the standard reference works on Western art history, E.H. Gombrich’s The Story of Art(1961) and H.W. Janson’s History of Art (1962), the number of women artists mentioned was precisely zero. The revised editions of 2014 named only 37 out of a total of 747. Today, female artists represent just 2% of the art market and over the past decade works by Picasso have raised more money at auction than those of all the world’s female artists put together (Artnet 2019). In Europe, 70% of art school students are female, but barely 30% find a gallery to represent them.

And yet, there is a growing underswell of interest that seems about to produce an unprecedented consciousness of this injustice and a revolution in the situation. Women’s art will gain the place it deserves. It is just a question of time and focus.

The aim of our Pretty Brilliant project is to concentrate public awareness on the creative powers and achievements of female artists. This year we are doing this by producing a spectacular special issue of See All This. The volume is being compiled in collaboration with international curator Catherine de Zegher, who has spent more than thirty years giving women a platform and creating a major audience for the artists she has helped to discover: figures like Frida Kahlo, Hilma af Klint and Louise Bourgeois. The special issue of See All This will examine the ‘soft values’ expressed in many of their oeuvres: love, intimacy, devotion, contemplation, physicality, spirituality and sustainability. Words that express what life is all about. Values that are underestimated but indispensable, as the events of the past year have reminded us, and values that we should all help to promote.

— Nicole Ex,
founder See All This art magazine and Pretty Brilliant