In the post-war 20th century, sculpture was still a predominantly male domain. And yet, despite the barriers they faced in foundries and workshops, a number of women artists were inspired to adopt unconventional approaches to sculpture. Turning to abstraction, women artists often pioneered new forms and techniques, even if they weren’t recognized for their achievements at the time.
For its latest major exhibition, and first historical show, Turner Contemporary in Margate, England, spotlights a constellation of women sculptors working during this time, brought together beneath an umbrella of abstraction. “Beyond Form: Lines of Abstraction, 1950–1970,” on view through May 6th, examines how art, gender, and the act of making intersected in the years following World War II. The show celebrates artwork created within a patriarchal context that for years was denigrated or ignored. Through form and material, these women pushed the boundaries of sculpture and other media, espousing an emancipatory creativity that aligned with the sentiments of the burgeoning beginnings of feminism.
Bringing together over 80 pieces by some 50 international artists, curator Flavia Frigeri has allowed space for radically pluralistic expressions to throb, glint, and revolve from every corner. The result is a brilliantly coarse mixture that refuses any singular language of abstraction in favor of a diverse narrative of international coordination in the historical moment.
Works by well-known post-war greats such as Barbara Hepworth, Lenore Tawney, Bridget Riley, and Louise Bourgeois are included among more obscure names, many of whom haven’t had their work exhibited in decades. Below, we’ve highlighted 10 artists whose contributions to abstract sculpture deserve greater recognition.
Maria Teresa Chojnacka
B. 1931, Warsaw. D. 2023.
Polish artist Maria Teresa Chojnacka emerged in the mid-1960s, creating woven sculptures from raw sisal and other materials that drew on traditional weaving techniques. Despite the burgeoning international fiber arts movement of the post-war era, textiles were considered less important by institutional standards. Even so, Chojnacka, and her contemporaries Magdalena Abakanowicz and Ewa Pachuka, used this to their advantage, since fiber work, unlike painting and sculpture, was not subject to the tight grip of censorship that ensued when Poland became a communist state under Soviet influence.
In this context, Chojnacka explored the language of abstraction with freedom, experimenting widely and broadening the scope of her work. In Chains (1973)—the first piece the viewer sees on entering “Beyond Form”—a trio of knotted sisal sculptures hang the length of the wall, exemplifying the artist’s preference for large-scale and immersive works that can be experienced in architectural terms. While the title nods to the work’s form, it also points to the idea of restraint evoked by chains.
Lygia Clark
B. 1920, Belo Horizonte, Brazil. D. 1988, Rio de Janeiro.
Born in Belo Horizonte, Lygia Clark began her artistic journey as a painter in the 1940s, associated with the Grupo Frente, a Brazilian avant-garde movement. By the 1950s, she had transitioned from geometric abstraction to a more interactive and participatory form of art, co-founding the Neo-Concrete movement, which focused on phenomenological observation in its rejection of strict formalism. Clark’s work evolved into three-dimensional and sensorial experiences that fulfilled the artist’s belief in the potential of art to elicit direct and visceral response.
Perhaps the best example of such are her “Bichos” (or “Creatures”), made in the 1960s; a series of arresting geometric structures that could be manipulated by the viewer. The pieces were constructed from malleable materials such as hinged aluminium containing plastic elements enabling endless configurations. Not only did these works challenge the static nature of traditional sculpture but they also relinquished the notion of the artist as sole creator.
Daniela Vinopalová
B. 1928, Opava, Czechoslovakia. D. 2017, Prague.
A terracotta vase titled Sculpture-vase VIII (1963–64) is one in a series of semi-figurative hollow forms made by Czech sculptor Daniela Vinopalová. The receptacle’s hint of functionality preserves something of the human touch. Indeed, her work started out with more figurative forms: statues of reclining women and sandstone reliefs. Though abstract, this lopsided vessel, with its deep fissures, irregular openings, and glazed eye staring out, speaks to the tensions of the female experience at this time.
In a letter from her archive, the artist wrote: “Through my work I try to look for a certain order, which I believe is built up of many contradictions, sometimes even of incomprehensible nonsense, but in its totality, it forms a whole that creates a balance between the contraries that hold it together.”
Born shortly after the independence of Czechoslovakia in 1918, Vinopalová lived through the tumultuous events of the 20th century, enduring German occupation and witnessing the republic’s incorporation into the Eastern Bloc. In 1966, she had her first solo show followed by several inclusions in group shows in then Czechoslovakia and Italy. However, the 1968 Soviet invasion brought an era of artistic fecundity to an end, and the artist would not have another solo show until 1996.
Ruth Asawa
B. 1926, Norwalk, California. D. 2013, San Francisco.
Untitled (S.114, Hanging, Six-Lobed Continuous Form within a Form with One Suspended and Two Tied Spheres), ca. 1958
Ruth Asawa
San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (SFMOMA)
The daughter of Japanese immigrants who settled in California as farmers, Ruth Asawa spent much of her childhood working in the fields, repetitively stringing beans. While studying, her artistic talent became evident, and during the family’s internment in 1942, along with 110,000 other Japanese Americans on the West Coast, she had the opportunity to focus on her drawing. In 1949, Asawa moved to San Francisco and set up her practice at home, while raising six children with her husband, architect Albert Lanier.
Dismissed by one critic as a “San Francisco housewife,” Asawa placed the interplay between life and art at the center of her practice, and her coiled, bulbous sculptures became an integral part of her domestic environment, transforming her living space into an immersive installation. The fluidity and transparency of the works not only delicately capture a sense of movement, but also engage directly with their surroundings.
In “Beyond Form,” the viewer encounters a pair of brass wire sculptures suspended from the ceiling that look more fibrous than metallic. Asawa’s home-spun method in which generative E-shaped loops repeat ad infinitum evokes organic forms, the porous architecture of Hanging Two-Sectioned, Open Windows Form (1958–59) calling to mind pulsing coral reefs or the clock seedheads of a dandelion, anticipating dispersal.
Sue Fuller
B. 1914, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. D. 2006, Southampton, New York.
Similarly driven by the intersection of art and craft was the American sculptor Sue Fuller, whose three-dimensional forms play with principles of balance, motion, and tension. Fuller started her artistic career as a printmaker, working as Stanley William Hayter’s assistant from 1943–45. While working with him, she found something of her own style in etchings incorporating lace and other fabrics, stretching and reassembling them until she was left with just a single thread.
In her “String Compositions,” yarns and twine are pulled taut across practically invisible aluminium frames, constructing intricate, webbed textures. This distinctive approach to abstraction seems to integrate elements from her upbringing, drawing on both her mother’s aptitude for knitting and her father’s job as an engineer.
From the 1950s onwards, her work was gaining recognition from institutions across the U.S., and Fuller turned her attention to the best media for display and preservation. Reappropriating fishing lines and synthetic surfaces such as Lucite, she developed original methods to make and encase her work, which she later patented and presented at national plastic conferences.
Lynda Benglis
B. 1941, Lake Charles, Louisiana. Lives and works in New York; Santa Fe, New Mexico; Kastellorizo, Greece; and Ahmedabad, India.
Greek American sculptor and visual artist Lynda Benglis is as celebrated for her contributions to the feminist movement as she is for innovative sculptural artwork. After relocating to New York in 1964, she moved in artistic circles that included practitioners involved with both Minimalism and Process Art.
Benglis gained attention for her pioneering work that used unconventional materials, particularly latex and polyurethane foam, which she poured freely onto the floor to solidify and take shape. In a rare treat for visitors, Turner Contemporary is exhibiting one of the few surviving original pours. In the corner of the final room in “Beyond Form,” an enormous black glob looks as if it is both running down and leeching the walls. The black mound, made in the 1970s, is a playful yet visceral allusion to the intractable and audacious corners of the human imagination.
Marisa Merz
B. 1926, Turin, Italy. D. 2019, Turin.
Much like Ruth Asawa’s coiled mobiles, Marisa Merz’s imposing Untitled (Living Sculpture) (1966) was also created within the confines of the domestic space: a rather astonishing feat considering its elephantine proportions.
Merz was the only female artist officially associated with Arte Povera, a radical art movement in Italy during the late 1960s that rejected traditional professional artmaking in favor of unconventional and everyday materials. For the work exhibited in “Beyond Form,” swathes of stapled aluminium strips flounder overhead, cloistered together in monstrous communion like a den of futuristic reptiles. In places, the pipes are begrimed with grease from their time propped above the artist’s kitchen table, as well as smoke from its brief residency in Turin’s Piper Pluri Club in 1967.
In 2013, Merz became the first woman to be awarded the prestigious Golden Lion for Lifetime Achievement at the Venice Biennale. Until her death in 2019, her enigmatic and poetic sculptures continued to challenge conventions and boundaries, leaving a lasting impact on the contemporary art world.
Yuko Nasaka
B. 1938, Osaka. Lives and works in Osaka.
Yuko Nasaka’s artistic practice began with a steadfast dedication to traditional Japanese art forms. The meticulous techniques of sumi-e and kintsugi enabled her to master the delicate balance between precision and expression seen in her later pieces.
Nasaka was one of the few female figures connected with the Gutai Art Association, established in 1954, dedicated to the spirit of creating “unprecedented things” in post-war Japan. The artist joined the movement in 1963 and held her first solo exhibition the following year, featuring a modular assemblage of concentric circles in relief on wooden board.
Nasaka drew inspiration for this motif from her family’s manufacturing of measuring instruments used in ships. She used a potter’s wheel to create circular plates, employing a scraper with precise craftsmanship to carve grooves into the acrylic resin and clay like track bands on a vinyl. Each was finished with car lacquer, airbrushed with an auto-factory air compressor to add luminosity and depth to the works. With this technique, Nasaka gestured to the increasing industrialisation as well as artisanal practices in Japan at the time.
Marta Pan
B. 1923, Budapest. D. 2008, Paris.
The post–World War II era saw a cultural shift towards consumerism and mass production, and plastics were emblematic of this change. These synthetic materials were unencumbered with the same heritage as clay, brass, or marble, and Hungarian émigré artist Marta Pan dynamically exploited this freedom.
Fascinated by the transparency of Plexiglas, Pan allowed the material to reveal different formal and optical possibilities with her sculptures rooted in primary geometric forms. In the piece Cylinder 5 (104) (1968), for example, three pyramid elements contained within conjoined cones appear and disappear as viewers circle the vitrine, giving an illusion of flatness while simultaneously revealing the complexity of overlapping planes.
These factory-made pieces established a relationship between art and industry, and also have an interactive element due to the works’ optical properties.
Arpita Singh
B. 1937, Kolkata. Lives and works in New Delhi.
While Singh is one of the better-known artists in this show, she is often defined by her figurative work—vibrant and poetic paintings where women float in elusive dreamscapes or lounge in silent spectatorship—but these bookend an important phase in her practice.
In the late 1960s, Singh created abstract drawings characterized by basic monochromatic elements of dots and lines. In the exhibition, two untitled pieces completed in the mid-1970s are on show, in which horizontal rows of dense and hurried crosses and dashes run across the paper. In one, the ink is smudged, obscuring the pattern beneath.
A stark departure from both her earlier and later work, the compositions show the influence of the artist’s meticulous work as a textile designer at the Weavers’ Service Centre in Kolkata. Connecting with the gestures of her craft, Singh’s study of stitches focuses the essential aesthetic elements of line, shape, and form into a coded language.
Novera Ahmed
B. 1939, Chittagong, British India. D. 2015, Val-d’Oise, France.
Though very little is truly known of her, Novera Ahmed is widely considered to be the first modern sculptor in what is now Bangladesh. Working at a time when the region’s primary art institute didn’t even have a sculpture unit, Ahmed’s focus on the creative potential of public three-dimensional art was progressive to say the least. It wasn’t until the mid-1950s that women in the region would be accommodated in higher education so, after studies in Kolkata and Comilla, Ahmed traveled to London to take up a place at Camberwell School of Arts under the tutelage of Jacob Epstein and Karel Vogel, later venturing to Florence and Vienna to focus on European sculpture.
From her mother, Ahmed inherited a skill for making dolls from clay and found objects, which she developed throughout her career, fusing Western influences with folk traditions in cement and bronze cast figures that subtly depicted the experiences of rural women. Le Djinn (1973)—a bronze sculpture on view in “Beyond Form”—was created when the artist had moved to France and alludes to
the titular mythical shapeshifting spirit. The sculpture’s mottled surface refers to the spirits’ fabled preference for reptilian forms.
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