After three years in the making, the Amar Gallery is bringing to London Hélène de Beauvoir: The Woman Destroyed, a unique exhibition featuring paintings and works on paper from the 1950s to 1980s by this French artist, crucial to the feminist movement.
Often overshadowed in the past by her older sister, Simone – the groundbreaking feminist writer and partner of Nobel Prize-winning Jean-Paul Sartre – de Beauvoir is now a highly regarded figure in her own right.
At the painter’s first solo exhibition in Paris in 1936 at the Galerie Jacques Bonjean, her work acquired a very distinguished admirer indeed: Pablo Picasso. He was drawn to the exquisite use of colour and shape in Hélène’s compelling paintings. Picasso instantly saw that her swirling brushstrokes possessed an undeniably mesmeric quality.
From the left, Hélène de Beauvoir, Castle in Alsace (oil on canvas, circa 1960s); Nude with Horse (acrylic on canvas, 1965); and Visage dans un Miroir Brisé (oil on canvas, 1969).
Now we can see for ourselves what so appealed to Picasso at The Woman Destroyed, de Beauvoir’s first solo exhibition in London, at the Amar Gallery.
One of the highlights of the exhibition is an extremely rare piece by de Beauvoir, who died in 2001 aged 91. In 1967, Gallimard published just 143 first-edition copies of Simone’s pioneering feminist book, The Woman Destroyed. It was illustrated with sixteen haunting etchings by her sister.
Gallimard refused to publish any more first-edition copies of The Woman Destroyed as they were feared that printing such “feminine” literature would be construed as an attempt to overthrow the social order. For that reason, first editions of this book are exceptionally hard to come by, but a copy will be on display at the Amar Gallery. A seminal work in feminist ideology, the book was the first and only time the de Beauvoir sisters worked together. It is a real coup for the gallery to have it on view.
From the left: etchings by Hélène de Beauvoir in pages 53 and 163 of The Woman Destroyed.
In another coup, Claudine Monteil, the best friend of both siblings, and author of The Beauvoir Sisters, will be giving a presentation at the gallery on 25th January at 2pm.
The Woman Destroyed is a most welcome – and long overdue – celebration of the beauty of de Beauvoir.
Hélène de Beauvoir: The Woman Destroyed
Amar Gallery, Kirkman House, 12-14 Whitfield Street, London, W1T 2RF 24th January – 2nd March, 2025 More information and tickets, HERE.
Author: James Rampton
Opening image: Hélène de Beauvoir. © Claudine Monteil
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