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The session will take into consideration the cultural and historical context, which led to experimentation with and adoption of new materials and techniques by female painters. Their material investigation benefited from historical factors, such as the rapid technological innovation during the Second World War, a period during which female workers were led to perform traditionally male jobs for war-production. During the immediate post-war period, many new commercial products for the household, such as aerosol paint, were advertised to women. Additionally, increased migration during and after the war forged new aesthetic and technological collaborations that would have a lasting impact on the art world. To emphasize a global perspective, this session would focus on artists from different continents, with examples ranging from the Romanian-American artist Hedda Sterne’s early use of spray paint; Venezuelan Elsa Gramcko’s hybrid canvases; Hungarian-born Judit Reigl’s scraped “excremental rags”; Belgian Evelyne Axell’s use of plastics and spray paint; to Japanese artist Aiko Miyawaki’s incorporation of marble dust into oil paint to create evocative reliefs.

Instead of limiting themselves to one media, many of these artists took an experimental approach to their studio practice, which this session proposes to further elucidate. Submissions from practicing artists who engage in this tradition of material experimentation are encouraged.