“Women Working,” a play and a reflection on Women’s Day
Coinciding with the commemoration of International Women’s Day, we want to give visibility to women in the art world, an area in which women have been (and still are) relegated to a minority and often decorative role. .
For this reason, we join the initiative of the Network of Local Museums of Barcelona in the creation of a Virtual Gallery of Women, a space designed to make visible women linked to our museums and municipalities in a broad sense, be they creators, thinkers, pioneers in the most diverse fields, illustrious or anonymous female characters, from the local environment or who transcend it.
In 2020 we have chosen this drawing in which women are the protagonists: “Women working”, by Gaspar Camps (1898)
The invisibility of women’s work
Women’s work has always been unseen and undervalued, both in the home and at work. In this drawing by Gaspar Camps, dating from the late 19th century, you can see precisely the work of a group of women in a workshop or small industry. This is a costume scene that portrays the female figure in a field that is underrepresented in the art world. It is a very dark scene, where the light points of the lamps and the white of some papers stand out, made with pencil on paper, white cake and ink. This darkness takes us into the work environment of the nineteenth century, where women had to work long working days, in unhealthy conditions and for a much lower salary than their male colleagues.
Women have always been one of the great drivers of work in the countryside, industry, commerce … a job that adds to the weight and tasks of the home and the care of the family, and that still today it is usually less remunerated than the work of men.
Virtual gallery of women from the Local Museum Network
For the celebration of International Women’s Day 2020, the Barcelona Provincial Council is continuing to work on expanding the Virtual Women’s Gallery, created last year from the Local Museum Network and which can be found on Flickr. As you know, this is a space designed to make visible women linked to our museums and municipalities in a broad sense, be they creators, thinkers, pioneers of the most diverse fields, illustrious or anonymous female characters, from the local environment or that transcend it.
