When curators Camille Morineau and Lucia Pesapane conceived this exhibition at the Musée du Luxembourg in Paris, they had no idea that their first room would evoke an oppressive echo of the present in the viewer.

Upon entering, the gaze inevitably falls on a large-format painting.

It shows a soldier with a companion sitting at the coffee house table in a cubist deconstructed pictorial space that seems to be bursting into splinters.

Instead of a face, however, a skull grins, and a prosthetic hook replaces the hand.

The woman's face is a gas mask with hollow eyes and a proboscis nose.

The macabre 1917 painting "La Mort et la Femme" by the Russian-born artist Marevna - actually Maria Vorobyova-Stebelskaja - sets the context,

A world war and a pandemic had just been overcome.

During this exceptional time, many women had replaced the absent or fallen men in professional life and gained a new self-image in the process.

In some countries - such as Germany, Canada or the Netherlands - they won the tough fight for the right to vote.

However, the First World War also contributed to calling the patriarchal model of society into question, at least for the moment.

Paris, as the city of the avant-garde with a comparatively free lifestyle, where women could also study at art academies, became a magnet for artists from all over the world.

The exhibition “Pioneers – Female Artists in Paris of the Années folles” brings together works by forty-five female painters and sculptors and places their work in a decade of social upheaval in a socio-political context.

In the nine themed rooms, the narrative of a chapter of contemporary history emerges from new perspectives.

Even if the space in the Musée du Luxembourg is limited - on average 3 to 4 works by each artist are shown - the curators manage to give a fascinating overview not only of art history but also of cultural history.

A world map at the entrance shows that only a small number of the artists come from France itself, such as the painters Suzanne Valadon or Marie Laurencin, who are still well-known today.

A major work by Valadon, "La chambre bleue" from 1923, shows a stout woman lying half erect on a bed.

Valadon gives her the pose of Goya's "La Maja" or Manet's "Olympia".

The style and the richly ornamented fabrics are reminiscent of Matisse's odalisque paintings.

Except that the view has changed radically here.

The woman, lying casually on the bed, wears an undershirt and striped pajama bottoms.

There is a stack of books next to her, a cigarette hanging from the corner of her mouth.

It is precisely through the ironic borrowings from famous role models that Valadon demonstrates the new view of the female body.

The female artist's perspective, and this theme runs through the entire show, also allows a different image of the woman to emerge: in her everyday life, without a make-up and self-sufficient.

The French Maria Blanchard and the Polish painter Mela Muter make visible a harsher reality of being a woman and mother and question the body beyond eroticism.

Muter paints skin as later only Lucien Freud.