Donas, Archipenko & La Section d'Or. Enchanting Modernism

Let the colour, shape and movement of Antwerp artist Marthe Donas' modernism enchant you. For the first time, an exhibition shows her central role in the international avant-garde, alongside the work of her partner at the time, Ukrainian sculptor Alexander Archipenko. Side by side, they take their innovations to a higher level. Surrounded by masterpieces by artist friends such as Mondrian, Modigliani, Goncharova and Vassilieff, the oeuvre and story of this forgotten leading lady offer a glimpse into a modernism that is colourful, groundbreaking and surprisingly gender-diverse.

Following a near-fatal fall through a glass skylight in 1912, Marthe Donas decides that nothing will stop her from fulfilling her dream of becoming an artist. Not her bourgeois family, not the outbreak of the First World War, and certainly not the prejudices against female artists. She travels on her own from Dublin to Paris and paints under the mysterious, genderless pseudonym Tour Donas. She achieves success: her colourful cubist and abstract paintings are an international hit. They are shown at numerous exhibitions throughout Europe, as far afield as the United States and Japan. 

In 1917 on the French Riviera, Donas meets Alexander Archipenko. He is already known as a pioneering sculptor who approaches volume and movement in a new way. No surprise that their meeting triggers a creative explosion. It results not only in a romantic relationship, but also in a series of masterpieces. Donas succeeds in translating the interplay of space and void in Archipenko's revolutionary sculptures. Like no other, she knows how to refine his graceful, robot-like humanoids and endow them with a character all of their own. It is the beginning of a quest that would lead her further and further into abstraction. 

Back in Paris, the couple takes on an important role in the re-established art circle La Section d’Or. This international group brings together artists such as Albert Gleizes, František Kupka, Fernand Léger, Léopold Survage and Thorvald Hellesen. In addition to Donas, the group also includes numerous other leading female artists, including Natalia Goncharova, Marie Vassilieff and Baroness d'Oettingen. Travelling exhibitions of La Section d'Or also feature paintings by De Stijl artists Piet Mondrian and Theo van Doesburg, whom the couple knew personally. 

Thanks to important loans from world museums and rarely seen works from private collections, Donas, Archipenko & La Section d'Or. Enchanting Modernism places the duo at the heart of an international network. After the horrors of war, these artists want to create a new, better world through art. Just over a hundred years after their sparkling work enchanted critics, they are once again taking their place as one of the important artistic couples of the previous century, to be rediscovered.