23 april – 8 november, 2026
Philip West Room. First floor
Curator: Eduardo Valiña
This project addresses the analysis of the female image in the surrealist artist Philip West’s plastic output. Women are the central axis of his work as a creator belonging to the third generation of the surrealist movement and for whom female representation plays a decisive role. Starting from the fact that surrealism is, within the historical avant-garde, the space where the presence of women was most significant – both as an artistic subject and as an object of representation – West constructs a discourse in which the feminine is manifested through multiple perspectives, placing women as the conceptual core of his creative project.
From a feminist perspective, the proposed analysis focusses on the mechanisms of representation linked to the body and identity, exploring areas such as personal relationships, love, sexuality, life and death, procreation or the experience of illness. These elements are linked to the idea of the body as an inhabited space and, at the same time, as a record of a lifetime.
West’s work, characterized by dreamlike fragmentation, bodily symbolism and the configuration of psychological spaces, constitutes a propitious scenario for the subversion of gender codes. His compositions play with the tension between the masculine and the feminine, generating new ways of interpretation and breaking with the traditional patriarchal imaginary.
The multiplicity of identities is present in a recurring way, and the figure of his partner emerges as a symbol through the initial “M,” which transcends the category of passive muse to become a vindication of collective rights and a space for female self-affirmation.
By means of this internal logic of composition, the artist articulates new power relations that depart from conventional representations of the feminine. His works examine the friction between the individual unconscious and the social structures that condition women’s experience, aligning themselves with postulates of contemporary feminist theory that conceives the body as political territory.
Finally, West establishes a critical dialogue with the surrealist legacy, redefining codes constructed from a masculine perspective and rejecting traditional models of representation of women based on the patriarchal structure.