Thomas Micchelli reviews 1970’s: 9 Women and Abstraction at Zürcher Gallery, New York, on view through December 22, 2016. The show features works by: Lula Blocton, Regina Bogat, Samia Halaby, Hermine Ford, June Leaf, Lizbeth Marano, Kazuko Miyamoto, Lynn Umlauf, and Merrill Wagner.

Micchelli writes: “In her highly informative essay on the exhibition’s website, curator [Barbara] Stehle takes issue with an essentialist agenda that would split aesthetic inclinations between male and female: ‘For the 9 women in the show, the point was never to make a distinction between the genders. The point was to design their lives and create a place for their work.’ It would therefore be more fitting to approach this show not as an argument between formal or gendered dichotomies, but as a glimpse into explorations of Minimalist abstraction that remain largely outside the received narratives of the period.”