The construction of the category of women artists

Abstract

This research investigates how the category of women artists was constructed by different agents and institutions over time, including art historiography itself. It approaches this construction as a set of social practices that shaped specific ways of engaging with female artistic production. The study focuses on two main axes: first, the regulation of female identity between the 16th and 19th centuries; second, a critical analysis of the concept of gender and the term women artists in light of feminist debates from the 1960s to the 1990s. Drawing on authors associated with feminist art historiography and feminist theory, the research seeks to destabilize the term women artists, emphasizing its conceptual instability as well as the historical and social conflicts that underpin it. In parallel, it reexamines the concept of gender, highlighting the implications of its use in relation to the category women artists.