WIAC

*The website is in the process of being built*

This site is managed by Una Richmond who completed her PhD thesis, No Second Sex in Art: The Women’s International Art Club 1950-1978, in 2023.

Short introduction to the WIAC

Originally called The Paris Club for International Women Artists, the WIAC was founded on June 1st 1898 by a group of women artists from Britain and North American who were working and studying art in Paris. The aim of The Paris Club was to forward the cause of international women artists and unite for mutual help in exhibiting. These initial aims of the WIAC continued throughout its history and, although predominantly British, just under 40% of WIAC exhibitors were of international origin. The club established links with women’s art societies abroad, invited individual artists to exhibit in London and had a sizeable émigré membership. This transnationalism offered women a unique and fertile arena to come together and mobilise their efforts across borders, but the cost of exhibiting internationally often prevented the club from fulfilling many of its ambitions. The WIAC held its first exhibition in London at the Grafton Galleries in 1900 and continued to hold an annual exhibition, as well as smaller regional exhibitions, until the late 1970s when the club disbanded.

Members of the WIAC included: Eileen Agar, Sandra Blow, Anne Bruce, Ithell Colquhoun, Elisabeth Frink, Dora Gordine, Gertrude Hermes, Frances Hodgkins, Laura Knight, Käthe Kollwitz, Marie Laurençin, Marlow Moss, Orovida (Pissarro), Wendy Pasmore, Anne Redpath, Ethel Sands and the WIAC President from 1931 to 1945 Ethel Walker.

Exhibitors included: Gillian Ayres, Wilhelmina Barns-Graham, Vanessa Bell, Mary Cassatt, Prunella Clough, Sonia Delaunay, Evelyn Dunbar, Helen Frankenthaler, Natalia Goncharova, Barbara Hepworth, Lee Krasner, Berthe Morisot, Louise Nevelson, Paula Rego, Anne Estelle Rice and Gillian Wise.

Over 2,600 artists exhibited with the WIAC spanning eight decades. The above names are only a small selection of the well-known artists who exhibited with the WIAC and there is an increasing amount of attention, scholarship and literature devoted to many of them. However, there are a great many artists who were recognised and critically acclaimed for their work while exhibiting with the WIAC but have been neglected by art history.