Donas, Archipenko & La Section d'Or Format: Hardback

Marthe Donas, Alexander Archipenko and La Section d’Or explores Donas’s groundbreaking role in the international avant-garde, her cubist collaborations, and her visionary artistic legacy.

Donas, Archipenko & La Section d'Or celebrates the life and work of Marthe Donas, the first female artist born in Antwerp to achieve international acclaim within the avant-garde movement. Her breakthrough came in 1919 with a solo exhibition in Geneva, where her signature style—innovative forms painted in shimmering, pearlescent tones—set her apart. A key figure in the Cubist collective La Section d'Or, Donas worked closely with sculptor Alexander Archipenko, whose influence helped shape her artistic vision. This cosmopolitan group, which also included Georges Braque, Fernand Léger, and Constantin Brancusi, attracted many pioneering women artists, such as Natalia Goncharova and Marie Vassilieff. This publication places Donas in this dynamic international context while highlighting her connections to fellow artists. A visionary with an expansive network, Donas sought not only to unite artists but to create a new world through her deeply personal art.

Adriaan Gonnissen is a historian and art historian. He is currently a curator of modern art at the Royal Museum of Fine Arts (KMSKA) in Antwerp, where he is developing a series of exhibitions on Belgian modernism from both international and regional perspectives. Peter J.H. Pauwels is the curator of the exhibition and the author of an extensive monograph on Marthe Donas, published in 2015. He is an expert on the life and work of Marthe Donas (1885-1967), the pioneering Belgian modernist artist.