Visionary artists in Spain: spirituality, feminism and utopia (1900-2000) (ALMA)

This project aims to identify, study and disseminate the work of visionary women artists active in Spain since the end of the 19th century. We start, on the one hand, from the traditional links between art and spirituality (considering both concepts in a broad way) generated by philosophy, aesthetics and art history. On the other, from the observation that, in these discourses and practices, women have made specific contributions which, as in other cases, have been historically excluded. And finally, from the evidence that, as is already being proposed in numerous international research projects and exhibitions (from which Spanish artists are often absent), the inclusion of these practices and their study from new parameters inevitably broadens and alters definitions, categories and views on the creative act, as well as on theoretical discourses and the construction of narratives of art history. However, these new considerations on female visionary artistic and creative practices are practically absent in research and exhibitions in Spain. The intention of our project is to alleviate this absence and investigate the creative practices of women and visionary artists in our territory, taking into account and contributing to the development of this new paradigm with the main objective of learning about and making their work visible and establishing new and different approaches to their work.

The concept of visionary, widely used in international academic and museum circles, stems from the fact that from the early 20th century many women, traditionally excluded from the recognised fields of knowledge, found in the world of the spiritual, the esoteric, the mediumistic or the clairvoyant a space in which to channel their interests and abilities, which often took the form of writing texts and creating works of a very varied nature; As the century progressed, this interest opened up to broader forms of spirituality, including an attraction to ritual, to the cultures of native peoples, to Eastern philosophies and schools of thought, or to a transcendent relationship with nature, and was articulated through increasingly diverse artistic practices. Many of them neither considered themselves artists nor have they traditionally been considered artists, as they did not professionalise their creative work, did not have artistic training or did not participate in the art world. And they worked in a variety of techniques, languages and materials (sewing, embroidery, drawing and painting, the writings that often accompany them, and other related manifestations such as dance or the performing arts). Our research will focus on the framework of the Spanish state in a broad time frame, in which we have detected diverse creative approaches to spiritual experiences.