Exhibition reveals overlooked female artist as a pioneer of modernism

In the turbulent years after the first world war when artistic experiment flourished, critics were intrigued by the mysteriously named modernist Tour Donas.

- Jennifer Rankin

A self-portrait by Donas, who is now gaining global recognition

“There is a kind of charm in Tour Donas’s work that we are not accustomed to seeing in painters of his school,” wrote one, “a kind of gentle timidity that seems to reveal a feminine sensitivity.” His work was, in fact, her work; namely Marthe Donas, a Belgian who had taken a gender-neutral name to get on in the male-dominated world of art.

As Tour Donas, Marthe enjoyed a brief but dazzling career before falling into obscurity. Now the city of her birth, Antwerp in Belgium, is hosting an exhibition to place her in the modernist pantheon, alongside Piet Mondrian, Amedeo Modigliani and Alexander Archipenko, the Ukrainian sculptor who was her mentor as well as her romantic and creative partner.

The exhibition, which opens today at the Royal Museum of Fine Arts (KMSKA) in Antwerp, includes 55 of her works, from cubist paintings in warm colours and shimmering impressions of textiles to flatter abstract pieces. Donas is in the company of Archipenko and La Section d'Or, a pan-European group who aspired to promote modernism without cliques or manifestos.