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Creating Change: Céline Dangotte and Marie Teinitzerová at the Intersection of Art, Labour and Politics.

par Filée, Eve
Référence Making a living, making art: Wage labour, class, and the female avant-garde, 1920–1948.(15-16 Mai: Constructor University, Bremen)
Publication A Paraître, 2025

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Résumé :

Céline Dangotte (1883-1975) remains a largely forgotten yet important and fascinating figure in the Belgian Art Nouveau and feminist movements. In a period marked by industrialisation and struggles for gender equality, the 28-year-old young woman inherited her mother’s interior design store, which she transformed into L’Art Décoratif Céline Dangotte (ADCD), “one of the most significant interior design houses in Belgium.”1 In her journal, preserved in the Archives of Brussels City, Dangotte recounts how she intertwined social engagement with aesthetic production to address the economic and political challenges of her time (see Appendix). Indeed, the ADCD’s aesthetic mission was inseparable from its social purpose : to democratise beauty by a design accessible to all, but also to offer a pioneering model of social cooperative. Dangotte’s ADCD employed young women from various backgrounds, including both the petite bourgeoisie and marginalised groups such as orphans and delinquents, in an attempt to offer them a pathway toward stability. The business’s profits were equally redistributed among the employees. This example, among many from Dangotte’s life, illustrates the intricate interplay between creativity, labour, activism and nationalism that defined modernity. Dangotte’s case resonates with those of other European women who combined artistic and social ambitions, such as Czech textile artist Marie Teinitzerová, co-founder of the Artěl workshop, which worked according to principles similar to those of the ADCD. This presentation will examine the inner workings of these ateliers, contextualised in these multilingual and multiethnic “semi-peripheral” spaces of Belgium and Bohemia, and the particularities shaped by their female leaderships.