Fanchon Fröhlich: Inside exhibition for 'forgotten' Liverpool artist who was 'wrong sex'

The Victoria Gallery & Museum preserve and present all the unique objects from the last 130 years of the University of Liverpool's history, alongside curating imaginative exhibitions. Their latest display is of work by an artist once deemed 'the wrong sex'.

Abstract Thinking: Fanchon Fröhlich & Her Contemporaries explores the work of Liverpool-based artist and intellectual Fanchon Fröhlich (1927 – 2016) alongside British abstract artists of the 20th century.

Born in the US, Fanchon moved to Liverpool in 1949, where she remained until she died in 2016. When she passed away, she left her substantial collection of art and important biographical documents to another Liverpool-based artist, Terry Duffy, who founded the charitable arts organisation BADA in 1986.

Terry told LiverpoolWorld: "There was a point in which - I think it was in the early 60s - when she was trying to get exhibitions. She was doing abstract art, which tended to be a male domain. She was told by a woman gallery owner that she was simply the wrong sex.

"We're at a point now where we realise that there were so many great women artists who were not recognised in their time, and she is one of them. She should be recognised as being a highly talented woman."

Also featured in the exhibition is one of Terry's own works, The Miraculous Draught of Fishes, which was exhibited in the 1991 John Moores Painting Prize at Walker Art Gallery.

The free exhibition features 11 of her paintings and prints from The British Art and Design Association (BADA) archives, showing her strongly gestural and spontaneous abstract expressionist style. These are on display alongside other abstract artists from the University's collection, many of whom she worked with during her career.

In the University of Liverpool's founding charter, there was a clause for equality, and by 1884, half of the students were female, making the gallery an apt place to present the work of a woman who was such a trailblazer.

• Watch the video above for a look at the Abstract Thinking: Fanchon Fröhlich & Her Contemporaries exhibition.