Pionnières exhibition: the Musée du Luxembourg takes us to the Roaring Twenties Paris, pictures

The musée du Luxembourg shines a light on artists from the Roaring Twenties with their new exhibition. Paintings, sculptures, photographs, movies, textile and literary works of art: no art genre has been left aside by these multi-talented women who did not think twice to let go off the standards of their time to innovate.

From March 2 to July 10, 2022 run and discover “Pionnières. Artistes d'un nouveau genre dans le Paris des années folles” – Pioneers. Artists of a new kind in the Paris of the Roaring Twenties. This exhibition shows women who have been able for the first time at the beginning of the 20^th century to go to major art school and enjoy art teaching that were so far for men only.

These artists promoted by the Musée du Luxembourg have run major modern art movements, although their roles have been forgotten or pushed aside. The Parisian museum hosts 100 years later this exhibition to give them their rightful place in the history of art.

These works made by female painters, sculptors or photographers show these women’s fight for their empowerment. They had their own studios, galleries, publishing houses, they shamelessly depicted naked bodies, they claimed for their right to dress, marry or love whoever they wanted, without having to stick to the manacles they blew up with the stroke of a brush.

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Fauvism, abstraction, cubism, or surrealism, dancing, architecture, design, literature and even sciences: these pioneer women have taken over all genres, putting no limits to their art.

In Paris, in the 1920’s, codes are crumbling with night parties. The Latin Quarter, Montparnasse and Montmartre are the places for exuberance and liberties: a breeding ground for these women who want to conquer the world of arts.

The Musée du Luxembourg introduces the work by 45 artists, 45 female painters, sculptors, movie directors, singers, designers… From Suzanne Valadon to Tamara de Lempicka, to Mela Muter, Anton Prinner and Gerda Wegener, the Paris from the Roaring Twenties come back to life before our eyes in all its flamboyance and richness, in shapes as multiple as fascinating.

The exhibition, very complete, provides a global vision on the empowerement of women from the Roaring twenties. From factory workers to political fights for women's rights, to the empowerement of female artists and identity actions, all the fights that moved the feminist and female classes are displayed, and these very fights are still current, a century later.

They are artists and art women, Amazons, mothers, androgynous or ultra-feminine, revolutionary and bold, in love with women and men, they are pioneer in these arts and this society they left as a heritage. They allowed themselves to choose and let their love and identity live as smoothly as possible.

They have been made invisible a lot, and it is time for them to get back on stage, these pioneers, these artists of a new genre in the Paris of the Roaring Twenties.