This must be art by a man. These prints surely came from the brothers or father of Magdalena van de Passe. But certainly not from her! Many works by the copper engraver born in Cologne (1600–1638) experienced this – her prints were long attributed to others. However, her landscape images, portraits, and mythological scenes from Ovid's Metamorphoses at least made it into the contemporary artist directory "Teutsche Academie" – very unusual for a woman. And yet, the exhibition "Women in Progress" at Burg Vischering in Lüdinghausen shows that even a supported copper engraver's daughter like her, with her own workshop, had to fight for recognition. And a name of her own.
Curator Swenja Janning has dedicated the first exhibition cabinet to the daughter of the Dutch copper engraver Crispijn van de Passe. Her father had been a member of the Lukas Guild in Antwerp since 1584, a brotherhood of woodcarvers and printers, and worked as a copper engraver. About a year later, he must have left the city after the siege by the Spanish army in the Eighty Years' War. Together with his wife Magdalena de Bock, he founded his own publishing house in Cologne in 1589, where later his descendants also worked: Crispijn the Younger, Simon, Willem, and ultimately Magdalena. Even as a child, she had helped her father in the workshop with the creation of prints. Here, de Passe learned over time to become creative as a female copper engraver. Among the museum pieces in Lüdinghausen is an original print, but also a printing press over 150 years old from the workshop of Karl Krause in Leipzig. Although this printing press is from the 19th century, its functionality is exactly the same as in Magdalena van de Passe's time.
She makes her way through the exhibition from one pioneer to the next in their respective fields – not only did they assert themselves in a male domain: they also belonged content-wise and professionally to the avant-garde of their time. Alongside Magdalena van de Passe, Baroque poetess Sibylla Schwarz (1621-1638), artist and natural scientist Maria Sibylla Merian (1647-1717), poet Annette von Droste-Hülshoff (1797-1848), expressionist artist Rosy Lilienfeld (1896-1942), and contemporary Finnish artist Milja Laurila (born 1982) are honored, bridging the epochs.
Six female artists from very different contexts and eras: For instance, Baroque poetess Sibylla Schwarz had already passed away at the age of 17 – and yet her poetry from an unusually female perspective made it into the collection "Deutsche Poetische Gedichte". Preparations remind us with their famous plant watercolors of Maria Sibylla Merian, who was probably one of the first women ever to travel to South America in the late 17th century and laid the foundation for today’s entomology. Additionally, there are facsimiles from Annette von Droste-Hülshoff, drawings by expressionist artist Rosy Lilienfeld, and works by Milja Laurila, who intensively engages with the theme "Women as Object and Subject in Art".
