A fitting entry into the exhibition Darlings serves as a textbook reminder of the bedrock that cements not all, but surely most, artistic creation: the idea that art is relational and draws from art that precedes it in time. While an artwork can be original and innovative to an artist, it likely won’t be unique to the world. It goes without saying, but it is sometimes worth underlining again and again—particularly when art history is written—for the connections, even the most obscure ones, to (re)surface and to nudge people to make the extra effort to trace them.

To say that Darlings presents itself as a homage by Helén Svensson as artist and me as curator to the legacy of the three pioneers Ruth Asawa (1926–2013), Lygia Clark (1920–1988), and Lenore Tawney (1907–2007) is to immediately open a can of questions for the visitor. Most notably, there is the big Why? There is also the probing curiosity about the extent to which these women really were influential to her, or from what point in time. Unlike Helén Svensson, some have idolized them since forever and have been more explicitly and overtly shaped by their artistic sediment.

All three women, like Helén Svensson, worked with leaving spatial imprints in a room with abstract and minimalist art, with shrewd material and tactile emphasis of the making hand—art that could appear deceptively simple but nevertheless be visually commanding and offer astute aesthetic experiences that were lyrical without being loud.