ANA PETERS (Bremen, 1932 – Dénia, 2012)

Was born in Germany in 1932. She trained as an artist in Valencia and Madrid. In 1964, she married the art historian and critic Tomàs Llorens. In the 1960s, Peters was involved with Estampa Popular valenciana, a group that aimed to reach out to a wider audience with contemporary art, at times presenting content containing social critique and using images from the mass media.
In 1966 at the Galería Edurne in Madrid, Peters showed a series of canvases under the title The Image of Women in Consumer Society that questioned the aesthetic and social stereotypes surrounding women at that time and which were painted in a language close to Pop Art. A number of devastating reviews of a sexist nature left her demoralised, so much so she felt incapable of continuing her activity as a painter.
In 1973, Peters and her family moved to Great Britain and she slowly took up her artistic activity again. In 1986, they returned to Spain, making their home in Dénia (Alicante). In the 1990s, Peters embarked on her abstract painting by producing a series of monochrome pieces, large areas of colour punctuated with brushstrokes or blots that call lyrical abstraction to mind.
Peters’ work has been shown in exhibitions in the Valencian Community and in Madrid. The IVAM mounted a retrospective of her art in 2007 and she was included in numerous international fairs in Paris, Cologne and elsewhere.

ANA PETERS. THE 1960S. THE ARTISTIC AVANT-GARDE AND SOCIAL REALISM

The exhibition Ana Peters. The 1960s. The Artistic Avant-garde and Social Realism presents a survey of the early and most figurative period of the work of the artist Ana Peters. The display features a selection of some twenty pieces, among them works on paper and canvases, some produced using techniques such as frottage, collage and transfer, framed within the context of the political mythologies and female stereotypes that held sway in Franco’s Spain. This group of works was shown in the exhibition The Image of Women in Consumer Society (Galería Edurne, 1966), the first to be held in Spain with a clear and unequivocal feminist discourse.

This project has been designed exclusively for the Barcelona Gallery Weekend and will only be open to the public from 15 to 22 September (throughout the day from 10.00 am to 8.00 pm).