When Kazimir Malevich exhibited the revolutionary painting ‘Black Square’ circa 1915, he transformed Modernism. Malevich said of the painting ‘the experience of pure non-objectivity in the white emptiness of a liberated nothing’. 

A century on from the genesis of non-objectivity and concrete art within Western Art there has been a succession of relative movements in Modernism, some of which are Suprematism, Constructivism, De Stijl, Bauhaus, ZERO, Arte Povera, Op Art, Minimalism, Hard Edge Painting, Process Art and Neo-Geo.

Coinciding with the Women’s Liberation Movement gaining traction in the 1960s a few non-male artists such as Agnes Martin, Anne Truitt, Jo Baer and Bridget Riley gained major recognition within ‘Abstraction’. ‘Que des femmes’/Only Women, is the 6th Biennale of Non Objective Art and is dedicated to the work of women. The premier exhibition is in France, with satellites, including this Melbourne edition. 

The history of Western Art is by and large a male artist history. 

Today women artists are free to invent their own histories.