From 28 September to 22 November 2026, Casa Museo Hendrik Christian Andersen, in Rome hosts the exhibition Contemporary Women Artists at Casa Andersen – The Body as Dwelling.

The exhibition is curated by Nicoletta Castellaneta and Luisa Catucci, in collaboration with Giuseppe Simone Modeo, Associazione Ars Nova, and Giuseppina di Monte, directress of Casa Museo Hendrik Christian Andersen.

Villa Hélène, built by Hendrik Christian Andersen himself beginning in 1922, was conceived not simply as a home and studio, but as part of a broader vision connected to the project for a “World City” in which art, science and thought could contribute to the construction of a harmonious society. His sculptural work likewise reflects this aspiration towards an ideal, monumental and universal human figure.

It is precisely in relation to this conception of the body that the work of the 42 women artists featured in the exhibition is presented. Alongside Andersen’s idealized and harmonious body are bodies shaped by experience, memory, identity, vulnerability, desire and transformation. The project forms part of a broader research programme devoted to artistic production by women from the second half of the twentieth century to the present day. Through a cycle of exhibitions and encounters, the programme brings different generations, languages and practices into dialogue and explores the forms of women’s presence in recent art history.

Extending across the ground floor, the rooms of the first floor and the exhibition space on the second floor, the exhibition constructs a kind of temporary and plural city in which works, bodies and gazes enter into dialogue with the architecture of the house and the monumental presence of Andersen’s sculptures.

Andersen’s artistic research is deeply rooted in the centrality of the body. Strongly influenced by the classical tradition and by Michelangelesque monumentality, his sculptures present an ideal and harmonious image of the human figure. The body becomes measure, balance and a striving towards a higher order, embodying a vision of art as an instrument of individual and collective elevation.

Starting from this conception, both aesthetic and symbolic, the exhibition brings Andersen’s monumental and ideal body into dialogue with contemporary artistic practices that have progressively transformed the body into a site of experience, identity, memory, relationships and encounter.

In the art of the second half of the twentieth century and in contemporary practice, the body is no longer merely an object of representation, but becomes material, language and experience. In particular, many women artists have made the body a space through which to explore their presence in the world, forms of identity, individual and collective memory, vulnerability and transformation.

The selected works reflect the plurality of these investigations through different languages and practices: painting, sculpture, photography, performance, installation and conceptual experimentation. The body thus emerges not as a single, definitive image, but as a shifting space traversed by multiple experiences and meanings.

The exhibition presents works and practices by:

Renee Adams, Lidia Bachis, Vanessa Beecroft, Barbara Boekelman, Louise Bourgeois, Rosemarie Castoro, Valeria Catania, Giulia Cenci, Valentina De’Mathà, Paola Di Bello, Annalaura di Luggo, Marlene Dumas, Tracey Emin, EVA & ADELE, Esther Ferrer, Leonor Fini, Sylvie Fleury, Maike Freess, Valentine Hugo, Silvia Iorio, Martha Jungwirth, Natalia LL, Catherine Long, Sarah Lucas, Loren MacIver, Eva Marisaldi, Elisabeth Masé, Monica Mazzone, Veronica Montanino, Meret Oppenheim, ORLAN, Gina Pane, Elizabeth Peyton, Loreal Prystaj, Carol Rama, Pipilotti Rist, Miriam Schapiro, Nora Schultz, Kiki Smith, Annegret Soltau, Iv Toshain, Claudia Virginia Vitari.