Emancipation Despite Circumstances: The Prague Spring, (Dis)engagement on the Art Scene and the Emergence of Feminist Consciousness among Women Artists
Abstract
This article maps the emergence of feminist consciousness among Czechoslovak women artists, placing its emergence in the late 1960s as part of the culmination of the reform process in Czechoslovakia. Gender policy was revised in this period and expert discourse came to understand women as a particular social group with its own needs and interests.
Although the Czechoslovak art scene produced no collective feminist movement, the author argues that artists arrived at feminist positions individually, influenced by the socio-political debates of the time, including discussions on gender equality. The artists did not directly participate in these discussions, but they were certainly aware of them, as gender was a central topic in the press and helped to propel the political processes of the time.
The article further explores the relationship of the local art scene to political engagement in art and to the "Western" feminist movements emerging at the end of the 1960s. The author draws on the writings of the art historian Milena Lamarová and artworks by Eva Švankmajerová, Nadězda Plíšková, and Zorka Ságlová, examining the political perspectives that informed the feminist positions these women assumed in their work.