Equality and difference in the professionalization of women artists: Comments on the Texts of Alejandra Val Cubero and Natalia Izquierdo

Abstract

The paths to professionalization of four Spanish women artists are discussed from an equality-difference perspective. Maruja Mallo is the only woman with a trajectory comparable to that of male artists in terms of formal fine arts training, recognition by specialized critics, economic independence through painting, and the separation between her personal and sentimental life and professional activity. In the case of the painter Amalia Avia and the writers Carmen Martín Gaite and Carmen Laforet, there existed a tension between their lives as artists and their personal lives, particularly regarding men, which was resolved through dependence, evasion or conflict.