In the turbulent years after the first world war when artistic experiment flourished, critics were intrigued by the mysteriously named modernist Tour Donas. “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 art world.
As Tour Donas, Marthe enjoyed a brief but dazzling career, before falling into obscurity. Now the city of her birth, Antwerp, is hosting a major 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 romantic and creative partner.
