Woman Made Gallery in Chicago’s River West neighborhood opened its “Bare Essentials: Minimalism in the 21st Century” exhibit this month, featuring women artists working within the minimalism framework.
Beate Minkovski and Kelly Hensen, two Northeastern Illinois University art students, founded Woman Made Gallery (WMG), in 1992.
In the early sixties Minkovski studied sculpting and ceramics at the Hochschule fur Gestaltung in Germany. Then in 1984 she went on to study painting and Illustration at the American Academy of Art in Chicago, followed by earning her Bachelors Degree in Art from Northeastern Illinois University.
This was a piece of art from the Bare Essential: Minimalism in the 21st Century exhibit at the Woman Made Gallery in Chicago By: Laura Jo Clanton
At the end of her senior year, the graduates “had to mount an exhibit and do all the things that are related to that,” said Minkovski.
She and Kelly Hensen “decided on artwork that shows how woman are portrayed throughout history: from the Virgin Mary to a sex blow-up doll man made in Hong-Kong. The exhibition addressed women’s position in patriarchal societies, including imagery on body/beauty, sexuality/reproduction, inequality and violence against women.”
laura j. clanton 