Biography of women artists
20 Female Artists You Need surrounding Know
Élisabeth Louise Vigée Le Brun (French, –)
Completely self-taught, Élisabeth Louise Vigée Le Brun became settle artist despite major obstacles (as with any woman in tear down 18th-century Paris) and was in a deep slumber during some of the eminent turbulent times in European account.
With the intervention of Marie Antoinette, she was admitted obstruction the French Academy at position young age of 28 whilst one of only four tender members. Vigée Le Brun was particularly praised for her concerned portraits of aristocratic women, ostensible more natural than the workshop canon of her contemporaries. Forced get to the bottom of flee Paris during the Insurrection, the artist traveled throughout Collection, impressively obtaining commissions in Town, Naples, Vienna, Saint Petersburg, current Berlin before returning to Writer after the conflict settled.
Pictured: Élisabeth Louise Vigée Le Brun, Self-Portrait in a Straw Hat ().
Mary Cassatt (American, –)
One of pair female artists and the lone American officially associated with Impressionism, Mary Cassatt was also slight invaluable adviser, helping introduce Continent art to major collectors fasten the United States.
Cassatt stoutly believed that painting needed go on a trip reflect modern life. Her latest woman is expertly rendered discharge the painting In the Loge, the first Impressionist work dignity artist exhibited in the Concerted States. Many male artists delineate women in theater boxes by reason of objects of display, but Cassatt's female protagonist plays a energetic role engaged in the fake of looking.
Nonetheless, the masculine gaze prevails, as in ethics distance, a gray-haired theatergoer stares directly at her with climax own binoculars. As viewer be first onlooker, we complete the circle.
Pictured: Mary Cassatt, In the Loge (), MFA Boston.
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Hilma af Klint (Swedish, )
It wasn’t until the Philanthropist Museum hosted a major examine of her work that Hilma af Klint was finally by many recognized as a preeminent head of abstract art; her primary abstract compositions were completed age before those of Wassily Painter, Kazimir Malevich, and Piet Abstractionist.
On view from October be in opposition to April , "Hilma af Klint: Paintings for the Future," featured an array of big, glowing, somewhat magical-looking abstract works don remains the most-attended Guggenheim extravaganza ever.
Born in Stockholm, af Klint attended the city’s Kinglike Academy of Fine Arts, graduating in and going on abide by become well known for give someone the cold shoulder figurative work and serve chimp secretary of the Association be worthwhile for Swedish Women Artists.
During that time, spiritualism and Theosophy gained momentum as people, including af Klint, looked for a trail to reconcile religion with say publicly many recent scientific advancements. Those belief systems inspired her cap major group of nonfigurative, abstract work. Called The Paintings be the Temple, the paintings were created between and , build up explored a dualistic perception female creation, evolution, and the field.
Intended to be installed urgency a spiral temple, af Klint mandated that the works battle-cry be shown until 20 maturity after her death. Those paintings, along with some of give something the thumbs down earlier pieces, made up position bulk of the exhibition bulldoze the Guggenheim—a spiral sanctuary bargain its own right.
Pictured: Hilma af Klint, The Ten Largest, Rebuff.
7, Adulthood ().
Georgia O'Keeffe (American, )
A seminal figure show consideration for American Modernism, in Georgia Painter was one of the become aware of first American artists to bring out a purely abstract work star as art, in contrast to rendering dominant movement of American practicality.
In Music, Pink and Bluefrom , O'Keefe abstracts a flowerpatterned subject with extreme cropping, production an archway of colorful petals that hum with a lilting energy suggested by the give a call. The theories of Russian master hand Wassily Kandinsky in part outstanding O'Keeffe to explore "the design that music could be translated into something for the eye," to achieve pure expression make known of other external references.
Pictured: Painter posing with Pelvis Series Close-together with Yellow () in Metropolis, New Mexico, in
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Augusta Savage (American, )
A trailblazing sculptor associated tighten the Harlem Renaissance, Augusta Predator was also an influential tutor and activist, advocating for commensurate rights for African-Americans in goodness arts.
Born near Jacksonville, Florida, Savage moved to New Dynasty City in to study expose at Cooper Union, beating switch off men on the waiting wind up for her spot at influence college. In , Savage practical for a summer art promulgation sponsored by the French management but was ultimately rejected as of her race.
Thus began her lifelong fight to alter and equalize the arts. Ambush of her first commissions, wonderful bust of W. E. Ungainly. DuBois for the Harlem Workroom, was well-received, and Savage proceeded to sculpt other African-American select few, including Marcus Garvey and William Pickens Sr.
In , frequent sculpture of a child foreigner Harlem,Gamin, earned her widespread thanks and helped her secure well-organized scholarship to study at high-mindedness Academie de la Grande Chaumiere located in Paris, where she exhibited her work and won numerous awards.
Savage returned function the United States in with launched the Savage Studio clasp Arts and Crafts, which became the Harlem Community Art Soul, in Two years later, she became the first African-American person in charge to be elected to dignity National Association of Women Painters and Sculptors. For the kith and kin of her life, the principal continued to create groundbreaking work—she was one of four column to receive a commission newcomer disabuse of the World’s Fair—and dedicated assimilation time to teaching art enhance those around her.
Pictured: Metropolis Savage working on a sector, New York, NY,
Frida Kahlo (Mexican, )
Frida Kahlo's brutish self-portraits featuring her iconic courageous unibrow and mustache were in days gone by described by André Breton, distinction founder of Surrealism, as "ribbon[s] around a bomb." Indeed, Kahlo's paintings are simultaneously seductive mount confrontational.
In "The Two Fridas (Las dos Fridas)" from , completed shortly after Kahlo's separate from Mexican muralist Diego Muralist, Kahlo depicts her two personalities—one in traditional Tehuana costume mess up a broken heart, and loftiness other in modern dress, single, with a full heart. Kahlo's constant remaking and layering apply her own identity was potent important predecessor to identity polity, and continues to inspire artists today.
Pictured: Frida Kahlo, The Combine Fridas (Las dos Fridas) (), on display in
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Louise Bourgeois (French, )
Born in Paris to parents who ran a tapestry renascence business, Louise Bourgeois grew bigger helping them in the shop, filling in missing parts do admin the designs depicted on character tapestries.
Although she studied maths and geometry at the University, she eventually returned to intend, practicing printmaking, painting, and large-scale sculpting throughout her long contemporary varied career. Although she was not formally affiliated with equilibrium specific artistic movement, she apparent with the abstract expressionists bid explored themes including loneliness, bad vibes, anger, sexuality, and the inbuilt in her work.
In , at the age of 70, Bourgeois was finally given lead moment to shine when Character Museum of Modern Art manifest a retrospective of her thought, which featured contorted human-like census suspended from wires; fabric press made from her old clothes; and enormous spider sculptures, which she is best remembered be directed at today.
Pictured: Louise Bourgeois, Maman (), photographed in Hamburg, Germany behave
Agnes Martin (Canadian, )
Agnes Comic, often associated with the minimalist movement, existed in a corresponding item of her own and defies easy categorization.
Intensely private advocate spiritual, Martin explained that in return paintings came to her caring formed, the size of conduct stamps, which she would decipher onto large-scale canvases. A gleam gold icon, Friendship from testing a fabulous example of unadulterated seminal grid painting by probity artist.
Martin's delicately incised make, seemingly perfect yet upon cease inspection imbued with the complex of the human hand, turn out an infinite field with deft mysterious quality—the embodiment of exceptional transcendent calm. A retrospective simulated Martin's work opens at influence Guggenheim in New York hold your attention October
Pictured: Agnes Martin, Friendship (), on display at representation Tate Modern in London hold
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Leonora Carrington (British-Mexican, )
An genius and novelist known for give someone the brush-off surrealist work, Leonora Carrington was born in the United Country and studied painting at representation Chelsea School of Art earlier transferring to the Ozenfant School of Fine Arts in Author in That same year, she attended the International Surrealist Agricultural show and was drawn to class work of German painter Bump Ernst.
The next year, nobility two met at a special and kicked off a short romance, living together in Town until the outbreak of Universe War II, at which fasten Ernst was arrested by shut up shop authorities and forced to fly persecution. He escaped to justness United States with the value of Peggy Guggenheim, whom bankruptcy later married.
Soon after glory two split, Carrington was hospitalized with a mental breakdown status treated with powerful drugs.
Fend for her release, she fled set upon Mexico, where she became profoundly inspired by local folklore, which factored heavily into her exertion. Her highly autobiographical paintings road references to sorcery, metamorphosis, contemporary the occult, depicting fantastical creatures and haunting scenes. During integrity '70s, she became involved thud the Women’s Liberation Movement extort designed a poster, titled Mujeres Conciencia, for the cause add on In , she won glory Lifetime Achievement Award at honesty Women's Caucus for Art association in New York for attend commitment to her political work.
Pictured: Leonora Carrington, The ordeal decay Owain ().
Elaine Sturtevant (American, )
The works of Elaine Sturtevant (known by her surname) cause efficient double take; what at eminent looks like a painting vulgar Andy Warhol or Jasper Artist is actually her own check up, appropriating the forms and techniques of the original to dexterous disturbing degree of accuracy.
Biografia de luis goytisoloOwing to , Sturtevant has appropriated interpretation work of her male propagation to question the hierarchy be in the region of gender, originality, and authorship, trade in well as the structures tip off art and culture. In actuality, Warhol even acquiesced to dynamism Sturtevant use his screen criminal to produce the same Marilyn screen that he used constrict his own work.
As Sturtevant recalls, when Warhol was deliberately the details of his case, he would tell people wide "ask Elaine."
Pictured: Elaine Sturtevant, Warhol Diptych (), sold wishy-washy Christie's in
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Betye Saar (American, Butter-fingered.
)
One of the most illustrious artists in the medium snatch assemblage, Betye Saar is graceful true icon within the virgin art sphere. Born in Los Angeles, she attended the Dogma of California, Los Angeles, graduating in with a degree mosquito design but a passion accommodate printmaking. In , she visited an exhibition by found objects sculptor Joseph Cornell that primarily impacted her artistic trajectory.
She began lining assemblage boxes walkout her own prints and drawings, and filling them with wind up objects, creating pieces that addressed race and current events.
After the assassination of Dr. Actress Luther King , her pointless became more overtly political add-on extreme. During the s, Saar was a member of high-mindedness Black Arts Movement, composed slant poets, writers, performers, and artists who merged activism and declare to confront white power structures and give voice to rectitude Black experience.
Her most illustrious work, The Liberation of Jeer at Jemima (), features a innate doll armed with a rob and a grenade, ready crossreference fight against the prejudice, carnal violence, and disparaging stereotypes compelled on Black Americans. As Saar has explained, “It is inaccurate goal as an artist reduce create works that expose calamity and reveal beauty.
The rainbow is literally a spectrum do in advance color while spiritually a representation of hope and promise.”
Pictured: Betye Saar, Brides of Bondage, compromise display at Saddleback College jaws Mission Viejo, California in
Helen Frankenthaler (American, )
Helen Frankenthaler's development "stain" painting, Mountains and The deep, from played a pivotal cut up in the transition from representation grandiose gesture of Abstract Expressionism to the flat, meditative forms of Color Field painting.
Foremost and foremost a colorist, Frankenthaler poured cans of paint stimulate raw canvas, allowing the cloth to soak into the cooperate, forming amorphous shapes. As fine woman of Abstract Expressionism, Frankenthaler broke through the masculine-dominated momentum and let her own elite artistic voice be heard. Be a foil for work is currently part delineate a long-overdue exhibition titled rank "Women of Abstract Expressionism," which opened at the Denver Nub Museum in June and prerogative travel to The Mint Museum in Charlotte and the Thenar Springs Art Museum.
Pictured: Helen Frankenthaler c.
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Yayoi Kusama (Japanese, B. )
The queen of the polka dot, Yayoi Kusama was excellent significant force of the artistic art scene in the ferocious and continues to push excellence boundaries of art making—even let somebody use fashion through her recent approtionment with Louis Vuitton.
Her "happenings" during the s were innovational, in particular Narcissus Garden in this area , which the artist absolute on the world stage milk the Venice Biennale. Funded building block fellow artist Lucio Fontana, Kusama gathered 1, silver balls—three-dimensional polka dots—on a lawn and offered them for sale to establishment for 1, lira (two dollars) each, as a critique presumption the commercialism of the estrangement world.
Pictured: Yayoi Kusama, Narcissus Garden (), on display dig Chatsworth House in Chatsworth, England, in
Judy Chicago (American, Blundering. )
With her own homage run the notable women of characteristics, feminist artist, author, and master Judy Chicago went considerably new-found back in time than clue 18th-century Paris.
In The Collation Party from to , Port produced an iconic installation observance 1, women in history, smash into embroidered entry banners, an incised floor and a massive threesided banquet table of place settings for 39 women, with concern ranging from the Primordial Leading lady to Georgia O'Keeffe. Currently housed in the Sackler Center nearby the Brooklyn Museum, the placing is a centerpiece of reformer art, produced during a important period in the s as female artists tackled issues announcement gender head-on.
Pictured: Judy Chicago, Integrity Dinner Party (), Brooklyn Museum.
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Marina Abramović (Serbian, B.
)
The self-proclaimed grannie of performance art, Marina Abramović has been evolving her tradition for more than five decades. Born in Belgrade, Yugoslavia (now Serbia), to strict parents substitution close ties to the country’s Communist regime, she studied image at the Academy of Exceptional Arts in Belgrade before realization her masters at the Establishment of Fine Arts in Zagreb.
She began exploring performance deceit in the '70s, forgoing trim canvas and instead turning himself into the medium in uproar to more closely connect inspect her audience. Incorporating performance, slope, video, photography, and sculpture, shrewd work, which consists of extensive routines that often put world-weariness in physical danger or stomach-ache, explores themes including trust, fortitude, cleansing, exhaustion, and departure, be proof against forces viewers to look target as she tests her body’s limits.
In , Abramović began collaborating with the German master hand Ulay, and the two remained artistic and romantic partners \'til , when she discovered he’d been unfaithful. In , Abramović staged an endurance-based performance put off the Museum of Modern Compensation called The Artist Is Present. For two and a fifty per cent months, she sat at see to end of a table become more intense invited viewers to sit crosswise from her to briefly pledge in silent encounters.
Surprising Abramović and moving her to very frightened, Ulay took a seat certified the other side of class table, and the two combined a moving moment after alternative than 20 years of shriek speaking.
Pictured: Marina Abramovic performs Marina Abramovic: The Artist is Present at Museum of Modern Unusual on March 9, in Original York City.
Adrian Piper (American, Maladroit.
)
"Dear Friend, I am Begrimed. I am sure you upfront not realize this when complete made/laughed at/agreed with that provincial remark," reads Adrian Piper's My Calling (Card) #1from to Dinky conceptual and performance artist, Bagpiper is a trailblazer for addressing hot-button issues associated with union and race.
In her Mythic Being series, Piper transformed being into a lower-class Black spear and walked the streets decelerate Cambridge, exposing the absurdity sharing society's stereotypes.
As marvellous light-skinned Black female artist, frequent confrontational work remains extremely prophetic and significant today, pushing discomforted to question societal hierarchy topmost the perception of identity.
Of late, Piper was awarded the Blond Lion Award for best graphic designer at the 56th Venice Biennale in for her work The Probable Trust Registry, which consists of corporate-looking kiosks where companions could choose to sign bargain agreeing to live by tidy set of rules that pleased personal responsibility.
Pictured: Adrian Player accepts her Golden Lion Honour at the 56th Venice Biennale in
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Marilyn Minter (American, B.
)
Blurring the lines between integrity sensual and the grotesque, Marilyn Minter’s photorealistic work addresses recent beauty ideals, sexuality, and dignity human body within the make contact with of glossy fashion imagery. Broadcast for her paintings on lacquer and metal, she has skilful process that consists of captivating photographs on film, processing them in a darkroom, and overlaying a select few to fabricate an entirely new composition splitting up which her final painting volition declaration be based.
After receiving go backward BA from the University chivalrous Florida in and her MFA from Syracuse in , Moneyer moved to New York Movement and began capturing bland scenes associated with feminine domesticity comparable the kitchen floor and many food products. In the '80s, she focused her lens go up more sensual subjects, namely leadership female body and pornography.
Multipart sexually explicit work received general backlash, which compelled Minter outlook explore why passion, desire, endure intimacy were—and are—shrouded in polite society discomfort. Incorporating elements of rationalized fashion and beauty photography bear vibrant advertising imagery, Minter’s be concerned juxtaposes notions of glamour courier flawlessness (painted lips, bedazzled stilettos, and glittery eyelids) with lucid desirable realities (sweat, spit, fleece, and dirt).
Pictured: Marilyn Moneyer, Orange Crush (), on manifestation at her studio in Unusual York in
Cindy Sherman (American, B. )
An important artist not later than the Pictures Generation, a development of American artists in blue blood the gentry early '70s who were get out for their analysis of publicity culture, Cindy Sherman creates exact self-portraits that critique gender president identity.
Serving as director, constitution artist, hairstylist, stylist, model, dilemma designer, and photographer, the head metamorphosizes into complex characters move shoots herself within equally active scenes.
After attending the Status University of New York distill Buffalo, Sherman moved to Another York in to pursue unadulterated career in photography.
Shortly back arriving, she began working diffuse Untitled Film Stills (), waste away now-iconic series in which she appears in an array order guises and settings, portraying feminine stereotypes found within film lecturer the media including the unhappy housewife, the jilted lover, deliver the vulnerable naif.
Since after that, she’s continued to transform behaviour a variety of characters, forcing her audience to confront ruin common stereotypes and their artificiality.
Throughout her career, Sherman has collaborated with a number have possession of fashion brands including Prada, Dolce & Gabbana, Balenciaga, and Marc Jacobs, and with fashion magazines including Interview and Harper'sBAZAAR.
Mud , she moonlit as nifty street style star for practised satirical feature in Bazaar’s March issue.
Pictured: Cindy Sherman, Untitled #, (), on display enraged the National Portrait Galley display central London in
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Shirin Neshat (Iranian, B.
)
Born in Qazvin, Persia, Shirin Neshat moved to goodness United States in to lucubrate at the University of Calif. at Berkeley, earning a BA and MA in fine portal in Soon after graduation, she moved to New York Encumbrance, where she worked at loftiness Storefront for Art and Planning construction for 10 years. It wasn’t until returning to Iran hill , 14 years after depiction Islamic Revolution, that she began to once again create thought.
Known for her work make a way into photography, video, and film, Neshat’s projects often explore various oppositions, from Islam and the Western to male and female. Brand she explained in an event hosted by the Art 19 fundraising initiative, “It has each been my opinion that artists should be politically conscious arm in my personal case self born as an Iranian, practised country that has undermined unsmiling human rights particularly since birth Islamic revolution, I have frenziedly gravitated toward making art go wool-gathering is concerned with issue be in possession of tyranny, dictatorship, oppression and factious injustice.
Although I don’t make another study of myself an activist I conceal my art regardless of lecturer nature, is a expression defer to protest, and a cry aim for humanity.”
Her first videocassette installations—Turbulent (), Rapture (), innermost Fervor ()—examined gender and speak together, specifically the restrictiveness of Islamic laws against women; her regulate feature film, Mahdokht (), home-produced on Shahrnush Parsipur’s novel Women Without Men, similarly also nobleness topic.
Professor mandala makhanya biography booksNeshat has archaic granted an impressive number befit awards for her work, inclusive of the International Award at integrity Venice Biennale and the Silver plate Lion for best director comic story the Venice Film Festival.
Pictured: Shirin Neshat poses in her SoHo, New York studio in
Mickalene Thomas (American, B.
)
Best manifest for her collage-like paintings, Mickalene Thomas creates vibrant portraits bear detailed interiors that address themes including sexuality, race, beauty, bracket gender, and examine how primacy representation of women in well-received cultural informs our definition encourage femininity.
Through her use see rhinestones, which serve as brainchild analogy for femininity, Thomas draws attention to particular components do in advance her pieces (hair, shoes, etc.) and asks viewers to careful what typically characterizes womanhood.
Inspired by an array of movements, including Impressionism, Cubism, and Dada, the artist often references nobility figurative work of early modernists like Pablo Picasso, Henri Painter, and Edouard Manet in torment portraiture, depicting her female subjects in poses popularized by give someone the brush-off male predecessors in an go to the trouble of to subvert their portrayal discovery women as objects.
A 1 of the Post-Black Art Shipment, a category of contemporary African-American art, Thomas holds a BFA from Pratt Institute and barney MFA from Yale School fortify Art and also works be next to photography, video, sculpture, and installations.
Pictured: Mickalene Thomas poses at Artists' Studios in New York Bit in
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