The Allentown Art Museum recently received a gift of photographs that pair with two works on view now in the American galleries. These photographs are part of a series called The Real Guerrillas: The Early Years, a project that documents and honors the members of the feminist art activist group the Guerrilla Girls, founded in 1985. No one knows the identities of the Guerrilla Girls because members don gorilla masks and adopt art historical code names.

The two aliases in our prints are Élisabeth Louise Vigée Le Brun and Remedios Varo. The Le Brun print references a self-portrait from 1790 that the artist painted while in Rome; the subject on the canvas is likely her daughter Julie, here shown as a gorilla reincarnation of her. The Varo print is after the painting Ascensión al Monte Análogo, 1960, with a fiery ethereal figure floating on a river through a muted landscape toward to a mountain that recalls medieval forms of towers.

The artists behind this series—Petah Coyne and Kathy Grove—have been producing diptychs (paired photographs) for each Guerrilla Girl: one alias portrait and one revealed-identity portrait. The two photographs on view in Trexler Hall are alias portraits of two different members, but the second, unmasked photographs will only be released after their deaths.

In the last few years the artists started producing interim prints that act as placeholders for the revealed portrait—see the blacked-out images to the right of the alias portraits, above. This summer the Museum accepted the gift of these interim prints, donated by the artists, that correspond to the Guerrilla Girl aliases in the collection. Upon the death of AKA Vigée Le Brun and AKA Remedios Varo, the Museum will receive the unveiled portraits of these pioneering members of the Guerrilla Girls, allowing us to complete these paired portraits and unmask their identities.

The alias portraits will be on display in Trexler Hall through August 24, 2025.


AT TOP, LEFT TO RIGHT

Petah Coyne (American, born 1953) and Kathy Grove (American, born 1948)

The Real Guerrillas: The Early Years AKA Élisabeth Louise Vigée Le Brun, 2015-2016, archival pigment print. Allentown Art Museum: Gift of Francie Bishop Good and David Horvitz, 2022. (2022.9.2)

Interim print AKA Vigée Le Brun, archival pigment print. Allentown Art Museum: Gift of Petah Coyne and Kathy Grove, 2025 (TL 2025.6.1)

The Real Guerrillas: The Early Years AKA Remedios Varo, 2015-2016, archival pigment print. Allentown Art Museum: Gift of Francie Bishop Good and David Horvitz, 2021. (2021.14.7)

Interim print AKA Remedios Varo, archival pigment print. Gift of Petah Coyne and Kathy Grove, 2025 (TL 2025.6.2)