It has been 40 years since the controversial radical group Guerrilla Girls was founded. Their most powerful sport "naked posters" break new ground - and have lasting influence.

On a Sunday morning in New York in 1989, some women peruse the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s permanent collection. The Anonymous Feminist Art Collective (Guerrilla Girls) are hidden among the regular bettors because they carefully calculate the number of female artists and the number of naked women depicted in the artwork, thus not attracting attention. They are secretly questing to make people care about race and gender injustice in the art world.

One of a founding members of Guerrilla Girls using Alias ​​Käthe Kollwitz, “The idea has always been to discover the memorable core,” Grias Käthe Kollwitz, who used Alias ​​Käthe Kollwitz, told the BBC in the National Museum of Women in the Arts before the exhibition celebrating the 40th anniversary of his work.

They traveled through different rooms - male nudes passing ancient Greece, with little nudes in the early Christian section - but when they encountered early modern times, they found that statistics led to criticism of the art world. They raise the question of who is allowed to be a subject and object in the sublime corridors of the world's most prestigious art institutions.

"Less than 5% of artists in the modern art section are female, but 85% of nudes are female," the poster reads.

To this day, the group remains anonymous, and she was wearing a mask when the BBC interviewed Kollwitz. "I don't think anyone who actually looks at the poster will go to the museum and will not think about what's on the wall and why," she said.

Do women have to be naked to enter the Metropolitan Museum? The poster was originally a commission from the New York Public Arts Foundation, but after seeing the final result, the funds were cancelled. Guerrilla girls work on their message and place it on billboards and buses. "We decided to buy space on the bus in New York City. We also paste it on the streets of New York City."

The posters put collectively in the spotlight and consolidate their style with the mass audience. The combination of humor, statistics and bold advertising slogans is the climax of how to address gender and racial inequality over the years. The first two posters of the group - what do these artists have in common? These galleries show no more than 10% of female artists or at all - New York's walls, street lights and telephone booths are all posted without allowing decisions from those who run a powerful arts agency.

The decision of guerrilla girls to adopt advertising language was a response to what they believed was ineffective in traditional protests. The group was formed in 1985 after participating in protests outside the Museum of Modern Art in New York the previous year. International survey of international painting and sculptures has only 17 of the 169 artists and eight artists of color.

“Several of us participated in this protest and it was obvious that no one cared. Everyone went into the museum.

The “naked” posters Kollwitz refers to are a game-changer. “We often have crazy visuals, facts and humor – things that attract them – if you actually look at our posters, you will never see art again.”

In her book The Story of No Man’s Art, author and Podcaster Katy Hessel points out how artists of the 1980s grew up on television at home. “Playing with the female media (and art history) stereotypes, they regained control of their eyes and turned it to themselves.”

“The girls in the guerrillas have attracted public attention to inequality and systematic discrimination in the art world and ultimately asked – how do museums celebrate the history of patriarchy rather than art history?”

Starting with the external forces pushing space forward, their text-based works now usually hang where they once tried to provoke. Their ongoing anonymity is another invitation to remember the female artists struggling in their time. All the founding members are art professionals themselves, but as guerrilla girls they carry the pseudonyms of late artists such as Frida Kahlo and Zubeida Agha.

"It's not just anonymous, but they do it very smart," said Michael Wellen, senior curator of Tate Modern, London. "Every time you figure out who you're talking to, there's an educational moment." The art world has changed since their initial count of nudes in the metropolis. But the inequality between artists of color and women remains compared to white men. This can be seen not only who hangs on the wall, but also in other areas of the art market. For example, according to a 2024 report by Art Basel, women's artwork accounts for only 39% of gallery sales. Recent research also pointed out that the permanent collections of major American galleries are 85% white and 87% male. In the UK, it wasn’t until 2023 that the Royal Academy in London showed off the life of Marina Abramović, which made her the first woman to hold a major exhibition in the main gallery.

"I think there is an undeniable change in how museums represent art and the history of contemporary art - in large part, it is due to the light of guerrilla girls on these inequality," said Waylen.

While the poster protests were initially criticizing who were allowed to hang on the walls of museums and galleries, this focus has developed into guerrilla girls and other artist activists who are now lying carefully about the guarantee of funding and the location of donors to make money. In 2019, American art photographer and activist Nan Goldin held a protest in Guggenheim, sending thousands of prescriptions into the atrium to protest the museum’s acceptance of donations from the Sackler Family, who owns Purdue Pharma, who owns the manufacturer of Priscription Painkiller Xyycontin, accused of being our OpioId Crisioid crisioid crisioid opioid crisioId crisioId crisioId crisio crisio crisio crisio crisio crisio crisio crisio crisio crisio crisio crisio crisio crisio crisio crisio crisio crisio crisio crisio crisio crisio crisio crisio crisio crisio crisio crisio crisio crisio crisio crisio crisio crisio crisio crisio crisio crisio crisio crisio crisio crisio crisio crisio crisio crisio crisio crisio crisio crisio crisio crisio crisio crisio crisio crisio crisio crisio crisio crisio crisio crisio crisio crisio crisio crisio crisio crisio crisio crisio crisio crisio crisio crisio crisio crisio crisio crisio crisio crisio crisio crisio crisio crisio crisio crisio crisio crisio crisio crisio crisio crisio crisio crisio Protests in the documentary "Beauty and Bloody".

The work of the guerrillas has also evolved to deal with a wider range of issues, address environmental issues and expand its iconic style globally. The founding members operate like a cell and collaborate internationally, with approximately 60 contributors in Asia, Latin America and Europe. In March this year, they created a poster with the Bulgarian Women's Foundation. Shouldn't they get a small portion of the government? Criticizes the government's lack of representation in women.

Tracking progress is difficult. Over the years, the guerrilla girls revisited the posters that put them in focus and made a narrative. This is a shocking comment about how little changes have changed despite public pressure. Between 1989, 2005 and 2012, the number of female nudes in MET decreased - but the number of female artists actually shrunk. Of course, this is not the indication of every institution, but as usual, the message is clear: there is more to do.

When asked why she was named after a German artist, Kollwitz said: "I chose her because she was a political artist, and it was also what I think of as a guerrilla girl and myself." The real Käthe Kollwitz focused on women, born in 1867 and was very anti-war. Styleally, her work is very different from guerrilla girls, but the themes overlap.

Guerrilla girls stay active, and the threshold for 40 years is a time for reflection, but also for outlook. You might expect someone who has been struggling with a snail-like progress for decades will be exhausted, but Corvitz says the challenge of progress is inspiring collectively. In November, they will be on display at the Getty Research Institute in Los Angeles and are working on a graphic novel. "We will never stop having trouble," she said. "Our battle is not over yet."