« The heirs of abstract art », guardians of a counter-current memory-Liberation

Sometimes the death of a great man takes out his wife from the shadows from which she had supported him. This is the case of these widows of the post-secret war that this brilliant book, at the crossroads of the history of women and that of abstract art, describes as heirs. Protected by legislation, they become owners or usufructuary of the property of the deceased – of the workshop that they will apply to sanctuarize – and moral rights on the works of the disappeared whose name they bear, sometimes added to theirs, in order to display their status. When like The painter Sonia Delaunay Or the plastic artist Jeanne Kosnick-Kloss, they are artists, they fade to put themselves at the service of the glory of their spouse.

If gendered hierarchy, practiced by gallery owners, conservatives and collectors at the expense of female creations, participates in this discretion, it also comes from their will: proof is the identical choice of Jean Arp, the widower of Sophie Taeuber. To devote oneself to their memorial duty creates between these heirs a form of sorority, a « between aid » to impose in the world of art their mission, with the ambition to have the power of this artistic current recognized whose ascent has been