The Giant Women Who Stomped on Art World Invisibility

A compact exhibition with a massive presence, Giant Women on New York at James Fuentes Gallery takes its name from a series of drawings and collages by Anita Steckel. In Steckel’s works, dating from 1969 to ’74, women the size of skyscrapers overtake New York City, their voluptuous curves challenging the authority of the phallic buildings.

The seven artists in the show, each represented by a single, exceptional work, were all part of the city’s landscape of feminist artists in the 1960s and ’70s. And all of their renderings of women — here, nude, in moments of intimacy and discomfort — serve as rejoinders to the artists’ invisibility in a male-dominated art world.