Eighty-one years after the avant-garde art collector, gallery owner, and curator Peggy Guggenheim opened the 31 Women exhibition in 1943, 31 Women: An Exhibition by Peggy Guggenheim has filled the gallery spaces at Fundación MAPFRE in Madrid. From the show’s curator Patricia Mayayo’s introductory statement, it becomes clear that she has made a “reinterpreted selection” of the artworks by the artists who were included in the original exhibition. With these works, grouped into four sections within the show (The “Self” as Art; Bestiaries, The Middle Way: Languages of Abstraction; and Strangely Familiar), Mayayo “propose[s] an approximation to some of the main thematic axis and strategies explored by these creators, who sought to assert their independence and avoid clichés associated with the label “female artists’”. For an exhibition that suggests an explicit connection to Guggenheim’s magnificent legacy through its title, visitors hoping to enter an imaginative recreation of the original exhibition might feel let down. However, those who wish to enrich their encyclopedic knowledge of the female artists within the avant-garde art movements of the early 1940s, and become acquainted with the innovative strategies they used in their works, will be delighted.

The introductory space presents a wall-sized, black and white photograph of Guggenheim, in which she is seated on her Kiesler chair. Behind her, her gallery space appears which is reminiscent of a futuristic space capsule with concave walls and the dynamic displays by the architect Friedrich Kiesler, created after Guggenheim’s instructions. The large image, which gives the visitor a slight impression of the glory days of her modernist gallery Art of this Century (1942-1947) in New York, arouses a desire to step inside. Although it might not have been the curator’s aim to let the decor of the show take centerstage, Guggenheim who was likewise motivated to “[highlight] the contribution of women artists who had often been dismissed as muses, imitators, or companions of famous male artists by the patriarchal mindset of the time”, used the experimental decor of her gallery to enhance the impact of her artist’s work.

A critic in Art Digest writes about the Daylight Gallery, the space in which Guggenheim curated the historic 31 Women show, that the spectator was granted the autonomy to adjust the display to their liking. So, these words give the impression that Guggenheim’s curatorial and design choices prioritized an intimate connection between the artworks and the spectator by interaction; walking around them; to experience the artist’s work and the space as a dynamic unity. At the reinterpreted show at MAPFRE, on the other hand, the reserved layout and placement of the works in the octagonal gallery with white walls feels static and refrains from alluding to the curatorial extravagance that was so typical for the Art of this Century Gallery. Furthermore, this presentation is at odds with Mayayo’s introductory statement which emphasizes her concern with showcasing the ways that the 31 female artists set the artistic vocabulary of Surrealism and Abstraction to their own hand. These female artists were playful in their artistic approach, while serious in their aim to wriggle themselves out of the artistic constraints tightened by the male dominated art world. At MAPFRE, however, the works are appointed a fixed spot on the walls and hang diligently at eye level. More creative choices regarding the look of the gallery space would have better served the art works, and therefore would have been much appreciated.

The presentation of a list of all the featured works, complete with their artists and date of production, that has been preserved from the original 31 Women show, perhaps unintentionally, reveals how less than half of these works are included in the MAPFRE show. Works by better known artists such as Frida Kahlo’s Self Portrait (1940), Dorothea Tanning’s Jeu d’Enfant (1942) or Leonor Fini’s The Shepherdess of the Sphinxes are nowhere to be found. This is disappointing, for exactly these works represent the way that these artists fashioned the (alternative) self-image of their subjects in daring and innovative ways; a theme that is highlighted in the exhibition texts. Kahlo’s contribution to the show, for instance, is a small, framed pencil drawing, which does not convey the breadth of her impressive oeuvre in which she masterfully constructs and deconstructs herself. One of the texts states that the ambivalent titles of many works, such as Xenia Cage’s Mobile (1942), made it difficult to pinpoint which works were exhibited in 1943, since no photographs of the historic show survive. Plenty of descriptions of the works shown do exist, though, as the reviews of the original exhibit —showcased in the introductory room alongside the mustard yellow catalogue with an illustration by Max Ernst, and correspondence between Guggenheim and Kiesler— make evident.

The disappointment of absent works aside, the show spotlights artists that were lesser known to the critics in 1943, as well as to the 2024 audience. The Serbian artist and poet Milena Pavlovic-Barilli’s Juno and Vulcan (1936), for example, a standout for its unsettling composition, does greet the visitor when entering the main gallery. The fantastical scene in oil pastel renders the two mythological figures that float in an unearthly realm as if emerged like pale apparitions from Juno’s wooden bellow. This piece, along with Hedda Sterne’s alien-like self-portrait in pencil, and Djuna Barnes’ illustrated Book of Repulsive Women, still manage to convey the artists’ “extraordinary imagination” that Guggenheim believed the works in her 31 Women displayed as well. Female avant-garde artists, especially, did device other realms in paint and pastels inhabited by hybrid creatures (a bird-woman; a nymph), creating alternatives of what a woman could be.

In the final room, a relationship diagram —the most original curatorial contribution to the exhibition— is dotted across the walls, and presents Guggenheim as the beacon of light around whom these artists moved. Around her photographic portrait, those of the artists shown in the exhibit are arranged according to their relation to Guggenheim or to one another. This diagram is a brilliant illustration of an artistic social network, as it exhibits the intricate personal and collaborative relations that were at play between female artists within the modernist art movements. Kahlo, for example, befriended Jacqueline Lamba with whom she kept great correspondence, and she hosted her and her husband André Breton when they visited Mexico. Therefore, rather than concluding with this insightful map, the exhibition should have opened with it, or been the centerpiece around which the exhibition would have been curated. A focus on the diagram would also have contributed to a better appreciation of the international connection Guggenheim minted between the female artists residing in Europe, America and Latin America, and how, through these connections, artistic imagery and experimental tendencies circulated. For instance, four artists —Frida Kahlo, Leonora Carrington, Leonor Fini and Maria Helena Vieira Da Silva— had strong ties to either Spain or Latin America. It is fascinating to see that Mesoamerican art impacted other artists presented in this room through their acquaintanceships with them, such as Louise Nevelson who met Kahlo through Diego Rivera with whom she collaborated on a mural.

Finally, the show raises the question of when it is appropriate for an exhibition to reuse the name of an iconic show that happened a good eighty years prior. And, what may we expect as spectators who attend the reinterpreted exhibition? As 31 Women seemed to be less a tribute to Guggenheim’s creative fervour as a curator, and more concerned with conveying a convincing narrative about women’s roles in the innovation of modernist art movements, it remains questionable if 31 Women’s reincarnation was successful in its entirety. In Madrid, the great number of artists included in the show results in a rushed enumeration of names and practices in the condensed exhibition texts. In this regard, the MAPFRE show unconsciously seems to prioritize the visitor who is already well versed in the artistic movements of Surrealism and Abstraction, and preferably familiar with the presented artists as well. At least, the exhibition offers a great introduction to some unique early twentieth century artists who deserve their fiery flowers.