Andrea Bordács’s volume entitled Múzsák lázadása – Válogatott írások nőművészekről és női művészekről [The Revolt of Muses – Selected Writings on Women Artists and Female Artists], published in 2021, will be presented in the presence of the author and Kata Ungvári-Zrínyi, art critic and curator on Thursday, 17 March 2022, from 6 pm at the MAGMA Contemporary Art Exhibition Space.

The author is a contemporary art specialist whose research interests include women’s art. This volume is a selection of her studies that explore this female perspective. The introduction to the book defines who we call women artists, how they are different from female artists, and then gives an overview of the different generations of female artists, and in particular of women artists, and what their aims were.

The first half of the 20th century saw a significant increase in the number of female art students and artists, but a significant change occurred in the time of those who were born in the 1960s. Nowadays, since the 2000s, the overall proportion of female students, both internationally and nationally, and in higher education in general, has been higher. This trend is particularly characteristic of artistic careers, in these institutions women are significantly over-represented. The publication is also important because such a survey is not yet available in Hungarian, although it is an important subject and examination material at art universities, and a regular aspect of exhibitions as well. In addition to the studies, reproductions of the quoted artists’ works are also included. The volume also includes essays on important female artists of the early 20th century (who were not yet women artists), on important women artists of the contemporary international scene, but especially on female artists of the Hungarian art scene, their themes, the trends in women’s art in different periods, especially in the 2000s, and the new themes emerging in this period. She also discusses why it is still relevant to deal with women’s art in 2022.

Andrea Bordács is an aesthete, art critic, independent curator, Associate Professor and Head of the Department of Visual Arts at Eötvös Loránd University, Berzsenyi Dániel Teacher Training Centre.