Jane Graverol – The Massacre of the Innocents (1967)

Louisiana print with the work, Le Massacre des Innocents , (1967), by the Belgian artist, Jane Graverol, (1905-1984), whose works Louisiana exhibited at the exhibition, Fantastic Women, in 2020. 

Jane Graverol was a surrealist painter and played with the gestalt laws - that is, especially the question of how we as humans perceive and systematize what we see.

Louisiana's extensive exhibition of female surrealists, many of whom have been overlooked and forgotten, testified to the fact that women have played a more important and more numerous role in surrealism than in any other artistic avant-garde movement.

Several of the female artists shown were initially partners, muses or models for the male surrealists, but also – which has often been understated – actively performing artists themselves, contributing important works to the major surrealist exhibitions of the time.

The exhibition showed on the one hand that the female artists worked within themes that were in many cases already associated with surrealism, but at the same time also how they differed from their male colleagues – not least in their search for a (new) female identity model. This often involved an examination of one's own reflection and a play with different roles and female sexuality.

The female artists generally rebelled against gender-specific role behavior and often portrayed themselves with markedly androgynous features or in unusual roles or disguises.