5 Women Artists Series Archives

5 Women Artists You Should Know: Vol. 8

February 24, 2016 By Wendy Campbell

1. Mary Beale (1633 – 1699) – Portrait painter Mary Beale is considered to be the first professional female painter in England. Born on March 26, 1633, in Barrow, Suffolk, Beale was the daughter of Puritan rector and amateur painter John Cradock. Her mother, Dorothy, died when she was ten. Mary became acquainted with local artists, including Nathaniel Thach, Matthew Snelling, Robert Walker and Peter Lely through her father who was a member of the Painter-Stainers’ Company. In 1652 she married Charles Beale, a cloth merchant (and amateur painter) from London.

Beale was prolific and reached the height of her success in 1677, completing over 80 commissions that year. She also took in students, many of them women. Beale supported her family through her work as an artist, and her husband Charles acted as her studio assistant, preparing her canvases and paints, purchasing supplies and managing her accounts. He wrote notebooks about his wife’s daily activities. Beale’s clientele included her immediate circle of friends, nobility, landed gentry, and clergymen.

Mary Beale died in 1699 in London, and was buried at St. James’s, Piccadilly. Her husband died in 1705. Mary and Charles had three children – Bartholomew who died young, a second son, also called Bartholomew, painted portraits before taking up medicine. A third son, named Charles was also a painter. (Tate, National Museum of Women in the Arts, Wikipedia)

2. Eva Hesse (1936 – 1970) – Born on January 11, 1936, Eva Hesse was a Jewish German-born American sculptor, known for work in the postminimal art movement of the 1960s. Hesse attended the School of Industrial Art, then Pratt Institute in Brooklyn in 1952, and Cooper Union from 1954 to 1957. In 1959, she received her B.F.A. from Yale and returned to New York, where she worked as a textile designer.

Hesse’s practice as an expressionist painter led her to experiment with industrial and every-day materials including rope, string, wire, rubber, and fiberglass. “Hesse explored by way of the simplest materials how to suggest a wide range of organic associations, psychological moods, and what might be called proto-feminist, sexual innuendo.” She started to gain recognition by the late 1960s, with solo shows at the Fischbach Gallery, New York, and inclusion in major group exhibitions. Her large piece Expanded Expansion showed at the Whitney Museum in the 1969 exhibit “Anti-Illusion: Process/Materials”.

From 1968 to 1970, Hesse taught at the School of Visual Arts, New York. In 1969, she was diagnosed with a brain tumor, and after three operations within a year, she died May 29, 1970. Since her death, there have been dozens of major posthumous exhibitions in the United States and Europe, including at The Guggenheim Museum (1972), the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (2002), The Drawing Center in New York (2006) and the Jewish Museum of New York (2006), and the Fundació Antoni Tàpies in Barcelona (2010). In May 2015, a documentary on Eva Hesse, directed by Marcie Begleiter premiered at the Whitney Museum of American Art. (Guggenheim, Wikipedia, The Art Story)

3. Marina Abramović (born November 30, 1946) – Marina Abramović is a Serbian performance artist based in New York. Her work explores the relationship between performer and audience, the limits of the body, and the possibilities of the mind. Active for over thirty years, Abramović has been described as the “grandmother of performance art.”

Abramović studied at the Academy of Fine Arts in Belgrade from 1965 to 1970. She completed her post-graduate studies at the Academy of Fine Arts in Zagreb, SR Croatia in 1972. From 1973 to 1975, she taught at the Academy of Fine Arts at Novi Sad. “The body has always been both her subject and medium. Exploring the physical and mental limits of her being, she has withstood pain, exhaustion, and danger in the quest for emotional and spiritual transformation. Abramovic’s concern is with creating works that ritualize the simple actions of everyday life like lying, sitting, dreaming, and thinking; in effect the manifestation of a unique mental state.”

Abramovic has presented her work with performances, sound, photography, video, sculpture, and ‘transitory objects for human and non human use’ in solo exhibitions at major institutions in the U.S. and Europe. She has taught and lectured extensively in Europe and America and is the recipient of numerous awards including Golden Lion, XLVII Venice Biennale, 1997, Honorary Doctorate of Arts, University of Plymouth UK, 2009, Cultural Leadership Award, American Federation of Arts, 2011, Lifetime Achievement Awards, Podgorica, Montenegro, 2012, among others. (Wikipedia, Marinafilm.com)

4. Sofonisba Anguissola (1532 – 1625) – Born into a minor aristocratic family in Cremona, Italy, Sofonisba Anguissola became one of the most successful female painters in the Renaissance, and was renowned for her portraits. She was the first woman artist to achieve international renown, and was recognized by Vasari, Michelangelo and Van Dyck during a period in history when women did not typically achieve recognition as artists.

Anguissola studied with Bernardino Campi, a respected portrait and religious painter of the Lombard school. Anguissola then continued her studies with painter Bernardino Gatti (known as Il Sojaro). Anguissola’s apprenticeship with local painters set a precedent for women to be accepted as students of art. As a woman at the time, Anguissola was not permitted to study anatomy or drawing from life from nude models and therefore focused her attention on portraiture.

In 1560, she was appointed painter to the Queen of Spain, Isabel de Valois, Philip II’s third wife. Over her long residence, she taught the young queen drawing and made numerous portraits of the royal family and members of the court. In 1571, Anguissola entered an arranged marriage to Sicilian nobleman, Fabrizio Moncada Pignatelli, chosen for her by the Spanish court. She lived with him in Palermo until his death in 1579 and received a royal pension that enabled her to continue working and tutoring would-be painters. Her private fortune also supported her family and brother. In 1580, she married merchant captain Orazio Lomellini and lived in Genoa until 1620. In her later years, Anguissola became a wealthy patron of the arts. She died in 1625 at age 93 in Palermo.

Anguissola is significant to feminist art historians. Her great success opened the way for larger numbers of women to pursue serious careers as artists. Some of her more well-known successors include Lavinia Fontana, Barbara Longhi, Fede Galizia and Artemisia Gentileschi. (ArtUK.org, Isabella Stewart Gardiner Museum, Wikipedia)

5. Diane Arbus (1923 – 1971) – Born on March 14, 1923, in New York City, Diane Arbus (nee Nemerov) was an American photographer noted for her images of marginalised people—dwarfs, giants, transgender, circus performers and others who might be perceived as ugly or surreal. Arbus was artistic in her youth, creating paintings and drawings. In 1941, she married actor and photographer Allan Arbus who encouraged her artistic pursuits and taught her photography. The couple worked together successfully in advertising and fashion with photographs appearing in Vogue Magazine. In 1956, Arbus began to focus on her own photography and studied with photographer Lisette Model.

By the mid-1960s, Arbus had become a well-established photographer, participating in shows at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, among others. Her raw, unusual images of the people she saw while wandering the streets of New York City were featured in publications such as Esquire, Harper’s Bazaar and The Sunday Times Magazine.

Though she thrived professionally, Diane Arbus had personal challenges. Her marriage to Allan Arbus ended in 1969, and she later struggled with depression. She committed suicide in her New York City apartment on July 26, 1971. Her photographs remain the subject of great interest, and her life was the basis of the 2006 film Fur, starring Nicole Kidman. (Wikipedia, Biography.com)

5 Women Artists You Should Know: Vol. 7

September 12, 2012 By Wendy Campbell

1. Edith Branson (1891 – 1976) – “Edith Branson was an American modernist painter who created her own interpretation of the multitude of avant-garde movements that blossomed in Europe and New York City in the early 20th century. She was a significant contributor to the New York art scene both through her numerous exhibitions and in the roles she served as a director of the Society of Independent Artists (1934-1940) and as one of the officers of Emily Francis’ Contemporary Arts Gallery. Branson exhibited nearly every year from 1921-1941 with the Society of Independent Artists, as well as with the Municipal Art Galleries (1938).

Most of Branson’s work is reflective of her personal life as a young woman living in the 1920’s and 1930’s. Though not autobiographical, her surrealistic works introduce a woman’s introspection into the many social changes of the day.

Branson’s early paintings were influenced by Cubism and Synchromism but expanded to include Surrealism in the 1930’s. Previously kept in family hands over the last 70 years, Edith Branson’s paintings are currently being reintroduced to American collectors. It is hoped that the reputation she acquired while active will be recaptured and that her position among many other important women artists of that era can be reestablished.” (Blue Heron Fine Art)

2. Maria Sibylla Merian (April 2, 1647 – January 13, 1717, Frankfurt, Germany) – was a naturalist, scientific illustrator, businesswoman, and publisher who made a significant contribution to the understanding of insects and flowers in the 17th century. Merian was encouraged to paint at a young age by her stepfather and still life painter Jacob Marrel. In 1665, Merian married Marrell’s apprentice, Johann Andreas Graff, had a child, and moved to Nuremberg where she continued to paint, created designs for embroidery patterns, and had many students from wealthy families. It was in the gardens of the elite that she first began her study of insects and took note of the transformations, and illustrated all the stages of their development in her sketch book.

In 1675, at the age of 28, Merian published her first book “Neues Blumenbuch — New book of flowers”. One year later, she published “The Caterpillar, Marvelous Transformation and Strange Floral Food.” In 1690, Merian moved to Amsterdam where her work attracted the attention of various contemporary scientists. In 1699 the city of Amsterdam sponsored Merian to travel to Surinam along with her younger daughter, Dorothea Maria. Merian worked in Surinam for two years, travelling around the colony and sketching local animals and plants. She also criticized the way Dutch planters treated Amerindian and black slaves. In 1705 she published a book “Metamorphosis Insectorum Surinamensium” about the insects of Surinam.

In 1715, Merian suffered a stroke and was partially paralysed but she continued to work. She died in Amsterdam on January 13, 1717. Her daughter Dorothea published “Erucarum Ortus Alimentum et Paradoxa Metamorphosis”, a collection of Merian’s work, posthumously.

3. Cindy Sherman (born January 19, 1954) is aNew York based photographer and film director, best known for her conceptual portraits.

“Sherman’s photographs are portraits of herself in various scenarios that parody stereotypes of woman. A panoply of characters and settings is drawn from sources of popular culture: old movies, television soaps and pulp magazines. Sherman rapidly rose to celebrity status in the international art world during the early 1980s with the presentation of a series of untitled ‘film stills’ in various group and solo exhibitions across America and Europe. While the mood of Sherman’s early works ranges from quiet introspection to provocative sensuality, there are elements of horror and decay in the series from 1988–9. Studies from the early 1990s make pointed caricatures of characters depicted through art history, with Sherman appearing as a grotesque creature in period costume. Her approach forms an ironic message that creation is impossible without the use of prototypes; identity lies in appearance, not in reality.” (MoMA)

In 1995, Sherman was the recipient of one of the prestigious MacArthur Fellowships, popularly known as the “Genius Awards.” This fellowship grants $500,000 over five years, no strings attached, to important scholars in a wide range of fields, to encourage their future creative work. Sherman’s works are in the collections of major galleries and museums around the world including MoMA, New York, Tate (London), Museum Ludwig (Germany), Guggenheim (New York), and others.

4. Barbara Hepworth (January 10, 1903 – May 20, 1975) – born in West Riding of Yorkshire, Hepworth won a scholarship to the Leeds School of Art at age sixteen where she studied with Henry Moore, and completed the two-year program in half the time. Her formal art education continued for a three-year period at the Royal College of Art under the honor of a senior scholarship. Hepworth trained in Rome in sculpture with master stone carvers and by 1924, she was a finalist in the Prix de Rome.

Hepworth returned to England in 1926 to exhibit her work with her husband John Skeaping in their shared studio, and then in a solo exhibition at the Beaux Arts Gallery in 1928. She joined a small group of pioneer sculptors who were committed to abstraction, with whom she developed her more mature style marked by organic abstraction and innovative use of various media including string, wire and colored paint.

In 1931, Hepworth divorced and two years later married the avant-garde painter Ben Nicholson, beginning a personal and professional relationship that lasted 20 years. By the 1950’s Hepworth’s reputation grew tremendously. Her work was featured at the Venice Biennial and won the top prize at the Sao Paulo Biennial. Additionally, she held her first major retrospective exhibition, which contributed to the honor of Commander of the Order of the British Empire, receiving the rank of Dame in 1965.

In the later part of her life, Hepworth was diagnosed with cancer which left her confined to a wheelchair. Hepworth died in her studio in 1975 as a result of a fire. The studio was later rehabilitated and opened as a museum in 1976.

5. Hannah Höch (November 1, 1889 Gotha Germany– May 31, 1978) was a German Dada artist. She is best known for her work of the Weimar period, when she was one of the originators of photomontage. From 1912 to 1914, Höch studied glass design and graphic arts at the College of Arts and Crafts in Berlin under Harold Bergen. In 1915, she studied graphics at the National Institute of the Museum of Arts and Crafts. In that same year, Höch began an influential friendship with Raoul Hausmann, a member of the Berlin Dada movement. Upon completion of her studies, she worked in the handicrafts department for Ullstein Verlang (The Ullstein Press), designing dress and embroidery patterns for Die Dame (The Lady]) and Die Praktische Berlinerin (The Practical Berlin Woman). The influence of this early work and training can be seen in her later work involving references to dress patterns and textiles.

Höch’s work at Verlang working with magazines targeted to women, made her keenly aware of the difference between women in media and reality. Many of her pieces critique the mass culture beauty industry. Her works from 1926 to 1935 often depicted same sex couples, and women were a central theme from 1963 to 1973. Höch also made strong statements on racial discrimination. Her most famous piece “Schnitt mit dem Küchenmesser DADA durch die letzte weimarer Bierbauchkulturepoche Deutschlands” (“Cut with the Dada Kitchen Knife through the Last Weimar Beer-Belly Cultural Epoch in Germany”), is a critique of Weimar Germany in 1919 and combines images from newspapers of the time re-created to make a new statement about life and art in the Dada movement.

Höch spent the years of the Third Reich in Germany quietly in the background. Although her work was not as acclaimed after the war as it had been before, she continued to produce her photomontages and exhibit them internationally until her death in 1978, in Berlin.

Sources: Blue Heron Fine Art (Branson), Wikipedia (Merian), MoMA (Sherman), Leslie Sacks Fine Art (Hepworth), Wikipedia (Höch)

5 Women Artists You Should Know: Vol. 6

July 8, 2010 By Wendy Campbell

1. Yayoi Kusama – March 22, 1929 – Born in Nagano Prefecture, Japan, Kusama is a sculptor, painter, writer, installation artist and performance artist. As a child she experienced hallucinations and visions of polka dots and net patterns, and had severe obsessive thoughts. Early in her career, she began covering surfaces including walls, floors, canvases, household objects, and naked assistants with the polka dots (“infinity nets”) that became a trademark of her work.

In 1957 Kusama moved to New York and quickly established a reputation for herself in predominantly male avant-garde art circles. She was very ambitious and used her position as a non-American woman and her history of mental illness to create a flamboyant public persona.

During her time in New York, her work was linked with both Minimalism and Pop Art, but it was never assimilated by any one artistic movement, as her work constantly evolved during this period. In 1973 she returned to Tokyo, where she began to write fiction.

After leaving New York, Kusama was almost forgotten until the late 1980’s and 90’s when a number of retrospectives renewed international interest. In 1993, she represented Japan in the Venice Biennale and in October 2006, she became the first Japanese woman to receive the Praemium Imperiale, one of Japan’s most prestigious prizes for internationally recognized artists.

2. Kara Walker – November 26, 1969 – Born in Stockton, California, Walker has a BFA from the Atlanta College of Art and an MFA from the Rhode Island School of Design. She is best known for her room-size tableaux of black cut-paper silhouettes that examine the underbelly of America’s racial and gender tensions. Her works often address themes such as power, repression, history, race, and sexuality.

In the 1997, Walker was included in the Whitney Biennial at the age of 27, and became the youngest recipient of the prestigious John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation’s “genius” grant. In 2002 she was chosen to represent the United States in the São Paulo Biennial in Brazil. Her work has been exhibited nationally and internationally and is included in the collections of major museums worldwide. In 2007 Walker Art Center organized the exhibition Kara Walker: My Complement, My Oppressor, My Enemy, My Love – the artist’s first full-scale U.S. museum survey. Walker currently lives in New York, where she is a professor of visual arts in the MFA program at Columbia University.

3. Elisabetta Sirani – January 8, 1638 – 1665 – Born in Bologna, Italy, Sirani was an independent painter by age 19, ran her family’s workshop, and supported supported her parents, three siblings, and herself entirely through her art after her father became incapacitated by illness.

Sirani quickly became known for her ability to paint beautifully finished canvases so quickly that art lovers visited her studio to watch her work. Her portraits, mythological subjects, and images of the Holy Family and the Virgin and Child, gained international fame. Her works were acquired by wealthy, noble, and even royal patrons, including the Grand Duke Cosimo III de Medici.

Sirani died-suddenly at the age of 27, after experiencing severe stomach pains. Her father suspected that she had been poisoned by a jealous maid and the servant was tried but acquitted. An autopsy revealed stomach ulcers as the cause of death. In her short career, Sirani produced 200 paintings, drawings, and etchings.

4. Camille Claudel – December 8, 1864 – October 19, 1943 – Born in Fère-en-Tardenois, Aisne, Claudel was a French sculptor, graphic artist, and the older sister of the French poet and diplomat, Paul Claudel. In 1881, she moved with her family to Paris. Claudel studied sculpture at the Académie Colarossi with Alfred Boucher and met Rodin in 1883. She became his studio assistant in 1885. Claudel became a source of inspiration, his model, his confidante and lover.

Claudel ended her relationship with Rodin in 1898 and struggled for artistic independence. Overcome by an emotional crisis, she secluded herself in her studio and destroyed a large number of her works, accusing Rodin of plagarism. In 1913, her brother Paul had her confined to a psychiatric hospital and she lived in institutions for the remaining 30 years of her life.

Camille Claudel died on October 19, 1943. About 90 statues, sketches and drawings survive. She is considered by many to be the first important European female sculptor.

5. Tamara De Lempicka – May 16, 1898–March 18, 1980 – Born Tamara Maria Gorska in Warsaw, Poland, de Lempicka was a Polish Art Deco painter. In 1917, she and her husband Tadeusz Lempicki escaped the Russian Revolution and moved to Paris where she studied at the Academie Ranson and at the studio of cubist artist André Lhote. She quickly developed a style that combined neo-classical colours with cubism in the Art Deco style that was prominent in Paris at the time.

De Lempicka was one of the most sought after painters of the 1920’s and 30’s. From 1923 onwards, she exhibited in the major Salons and in the early 1930’s, American museums began purchasing her work. Focused constantly on her work and social life, Lempicka neglected her husband and daughter Kizette. “Famous for her libido, she was bisexual, and her affairs with both men and women were carried out in ways that were scandalous at the time.” Tamara and Tadeusz divorced in 1928.

In 1933, de Lempicka married her patron and lover Baron Raoul Kuffner and the couple moved to the U.S. in 1939. She continued to live in a lavish style but her popularity as a society painter diminished greatly. She continued to work in her trademark style but also began painting still lifes, abstracts, and started using a palette knife. Her exhibit in 1962 at the Iolas Gallery was not well-received and de Lempicka retired from active life as a professional artist. In 1978 Tamara moved to Cuernavaca, Mexico, to live among an aging international set and some of the younger aristocrats. She died there on March 19, 1980.

Sources: National Museum of Women in the Arts (Sirani), Walker Art Center (Walker), MoMA (Kusama), Walker Art Center (Kusama), Wikipedia (Kusama), NMWA (Claudel), Wikipedia (Claudel), 50 Women Artists You Should Know (Claudel, de Lempicka), Tamara-de-Lempicka.org

5 Women Artists You Should Know: Vol. 5

April 8, 2010 By Wendy Campbell

1. Catherina van Hemessen – Born in 1528 in Antwerp, Belgium. Van Hemessen trained under her father Jan Sanders van Hemessen and eventually helped him with his commissions as well as receiving her own. Her 1548 painting “Girl at the Spinet” is thought to be the earliest surviving self-portrait of an artist at work.

Creating mainly portraits, Van Hemessen’s subjects were often seated and were usually set against a dark or neutral background. There are no known works after 1554 after her marriage to Cathedral organist Chrétien de Morien. Van Hemessen died in Antwerp around 1587.

2. Paula Modersohn-Becker – Born on February 8, 1876 in Dresden-Friedrichstadt, Germany, Modersohn-Becker was one of the most important representatives of early expressionism. Women, motherhood and nature were frequent themes in Modersohn-Becker’s paintings. Her images consisted of thickly applied paint with forms that were rough and angular with bold outlines.

Sadly, Modersohn-Bercker’s career lasted just seven years. During that time, she produced more than 700 paintings and 1,000 drawings. On November 20, 1907, shortly after the birth of their daughter Mathilde, Modersohn-Becker died from an embolism. She was 31 years old.

3. Jenny Holzer – Born in 1950 in Gallipolis, Ohio, Holzer is an American conceptual artist known for LED sculptures. Holzer studied at Ohio University, Rhode Island School of Design, and the Independent Study Program at the Whitney Museum of American Art. Before she began working with text art, Holzer was an abstract artist, focusing on painting and printmaking.

As well as LEDs, Holzer also works with other media including bronze plaques, painted signs, stone benches and footstools, stickers, T-shirts, condoms, paintings, photographs, sound, video, light projection and the Internet. “Her works often speak of violence, oppression, sexuality, feminism, power, war and death. Her main concern is to enlighten, bringing to light something thought in silence and was meant to remain hidden.”

In 1990, Holzer became the first woman to design the American pavilion at the Venice Biennale and won the country prize for her work.

4. Lee Krasner – Born on October 27, 1908 in Brooklyn, New York, Krasner was an influential abstract expressionist painter and the wife of Jackson Pollock. From 1928-32, she studied at The Cooper Union and the National Academy of Design in New York, and worked on the WPA Federal Art Project from 1935 to 1943. In 1937, she took classes with Hans Hofmann, whose influence directed Krasner’s work toward neo-cubist abstraction.

In 1941, Krasner met Jackson Pollock and the couple married four years later. “During their marriage, she neglected her own artistic work, though she never regarded herself as inferior or dependent on Pollock”. From 1946–47, Krasner began to produce her first mature work, the “Little Image” series. “Three groups of Little Images emerged, all-over staccato dabs, thinly skinned, dripped linear networks and rows of tiny runic forms.

From 1953-55, Krasner moved into the medium of collage. She pasted large shapes cut from her own and Pollock’s discarded canvases in her works. Her admiration for Henri Matisse is shown in these and later works.

After Pollock’s death in 1956, Krasner created her most memorable paintings – “large gestural works generated by whole body movement. From 1959 to 1962, she poured out her feelings of loss in explosive bursts of sienna, umber and white. By the mid-1960s, she began painting lushly coloured, sharply focused, emblematic floral forms, taking a more lyrical and decorative Fauvist-inspired approach. During her last period of activity, the mid- to late 1970s, she returned to collage.”

Lee Krasner died in 1984 at the age of 75. Her will established the Pollock–Krasner Foundation whose purpose is to help artists in need.

5. Niki De Saint Phalle – Born on October 29, 1930 in Neuilly-sur-Seine, near Paris, France, Saint Phalle was a French sculptor, painter, and film maker. After the stock market crash in 1930, the family moved to New York. From 1948-49 de Saint Phalle worked as a model, appearing in Vogue, Harper’s Bazaar and on the cover of Life Magazine.

“De Saint Phalle is best known for her over-sized figures which embrace contradictory qualities such as good and evil, modern and primitive, sacred and profane, play and terror. Her exaggerated “earth mother” sculptures, the Nanas, playfully explore the ancient of feminine deities while celebrating modern feminism’s efforts to reconsider and revalue the woman’s body. In recent years de Saint Phalle made monsters and beasts into architectural forms for playgrounds and schools. These works demonstrate her deep interest in architects like Antoni Gaudi, who made organic fluid buildings incorporating wild fantasies and everyday objects.”

Near the end of her life, and after more than 20 years of work, De Saint Phalle’s sculpture garden, called Giardino dei Tarocchi, (Tarot Garden) opened in 1998. Niki de Saint Phalle died on May 21, 2002 at the age of 71 in La Jolla, California.

Sources: 50 Women Artists You Should Know, Wikipedia (Becker), Wikipedia (Holzer), Stuart Collection (de Saint Phalle), Pollock-Krasner House and Study Center, Wikipedia, MoMA (Krasner),

5 Women Artists You Should Know: Vol. 4

January 30, 2010 By Wendy Campbell

1. Beatrix Potter – July 28, 1866- December 22, 1943 – Born in South Kensington in London, England, Potter is best known for her illustrated children’s books. She was an author, illustrator, mycologist, farmer, and conservationist. In her 20s, Beatrix developed into a talented naturalist. She studied plants and animals at the Cromwell Road museums and learned how to draw with her eye to a microscope.

In her thirties, Potter published the highly successful children’s book, “The Tale of Peter Rabbit”. She began writing and illustrating children’s books full time and became financially independent of her parents

Potter died on 22 December 1943, and left almost all of her property to the National Trust. She wrote and illustrated a total of 28 books, including the 23 Tales, the ‘little books’ that have been translated into more than 35 languages and sold over 100million copies. Her stories have been retold in various formats including a ballet, films, and in animation.

2. Kiki Smith – Born on January 18, 1954, in Nuremberg, Germany and raised in South Orange, New Jersey, Smith studied at the Hartford Art School in Connecticut from 1974 – 1976. “Since 1980, Smith has produced a variety of work including sculpture, prints, installations and others that have been admired for having a highly developed, yet sometimes unsettling, sense of intimacy in her works’ timely political and social provocations. These traits have brought her critical success.”

The Kitchen in New York hosted Smith’s first solo exhibition in 1982. She has exhibited annually from 1982 at the Fawbush Gallery in New York. In 1990, Smith received significant acclaim for her exhibition in the Projects Room at the Museum of Modern Art. “By manipulating everyday materials such as glass, ceramic, fabric and paper, Smith’s work examined the dichotomy between the psychological and physiological power of the body.”

Smith has also had major solo showings at the Centre d’Art Contemporain in Geneva (1990), Williams College Museum of Art in Williamstown, Massachusetts (1992), Whitechapel Art Gallery in London (1995), Museum of Modern Art in New York (2003), and Walker Art Center in Minneapolis (2006).

In 2009 Smith was awarded the Brooklyn Museum Women In The Arts Award. She currently lives and works in New York.

3. Élisabeth-Louise Vigée-Le Brun – April 16, 1755 – March 20, 1842 – Born in Paris, France, Vigée-Le Brun is recognized as one of Europe’s foremost portrait painters of the eighteenth century.

At the age of 15, Vigée-Lebrun was earning enough money from her portrait painting to support herself, her widowed mother, and her younger brother. For a decade she was Marie Antoinette’s favorite painter. European aristocrats, actors, and writers were also her patrons and she was elected a member of the art academies in 10 cities.

Vigée-Lebrun married Jean-Baptiste-Pierre Lebrun, a painter and art dealer who helped her gain access to the art world. In 1783, Marie Antoinette appointed her a member of Paris’s Royal Academy. As one of only four female academicians, Vigée-Lebrun enjoyed a high artistic, social, and political profile.

With the onset of the French Revolution Vigée-Lebrun fled France with her nine year old daughter. For the next 12 years she was commissioned to create portraits of the most celebrated residents of Rome, Vienna, St. Petersburg, Moscow, and Berlin. Vigée-Lebrun returned permanently to France in 1809.

Scholars estimate that Vigée-Lebrun produced more than 600 paintings. Her memoirs were published in 1835-37 and have been translated and reprinted numerous times.

4. Judith Leyster – July 28, 1609– February 10, 1660 – Born in Haarlem, Netherlands, Leyster was a Dutch Golden Age painter. She was one of three significant women artists of this period. Little is known of Leyster’s early training but the degree of professional success she achieved was remarkable for a female artist of her time. By 1633 she was the first woman admitted to the Haarlem Guild of Saint Luke and in 1635 she is recorded as having three students.

“Stylistically, much of Leyster’s work resembles that of Frans Hals. She favored the same types of subjects and compositions, notably energetic genre scenes depicting one or two figures, often children, engaging in some kind of merrymaking. In addition to these compositions, Leyster also painted still lifes.”

In 1636 Leyster married fellow artist Jan Miense Molenaer, and moved to Amsterdam, where the couple lived until 1648. She painted very little after her marriage. It is sometimes difficult to distinguish between the early works of Leyster and her husband, as they often shared studio props and models, and may have worked on each other’s pictures.

5. Remedios Varo – December 16, 1908-October 8, 1963 – Born in Anglés, near Girona, Spain, Remedios Varo is often overlooked as an important surrealist painter. Varo studied art in Madrid and moved several times between Paris and Spain where she met and exhibited with other leading Surrealist artists. In 1941, Varo and her husband Benjamin Péret fled the Nazi occupation in Paris and moved to Mexico City where many other Surrealists had sought exile. Her first solo exhibition in Mexico at the Galería Diana in 1955 was a great success and earned her international recognition.

Varo’s palette consisted mainly of somber oranges, light browns, shadowy grays and greens. Her paintings were carefully drawn, and depicted stories or mystic legends. She often painted heroines engaged in alchemical activities. Varo was influenced by artists such as Francisco Goya, El Greco, Picasso, Giorgio de Chirico, Braque, pre-Columbian art, and the writing of André Breton. She also borrowed from Romanesque Catalan frescoes and medieval architecture, mixed nature and technology, and combined reality and fantasy to create paintings that defied time and space. Varo was also influenced by a variety of mystic and hermetic traditions. She was interested in the ideas of C. G. Jung and the theories of G. I. Gurdjieff, P. D. Ouspensky, Helena Blavatsky, Meister Eckhart, and the Sufis. She was also fascinated with the legend of the Holy Grail, sacred geometry, alchemy and the I-Ching. She saw in each of these an avenue to self-knowledge and the transformation of consciousness.

Sources: DAF-Varos, Wikipedia-Potter, V&A Museum-Potter, Wikipedia-Vigée-Le Brun, National Museum of Women in the Arts, MoMA – Smith, Wikipedia-Smith, Wikipedia – Leyster, National Gallery of Art – Leyster

5 Women Artists You Should Know: Vol. 3

September 10, 2009 By Wendy Campbell

1. Artemisia Gentileschi – July 8, 1593–ca. 1656: Born in Rome, Italy, and influenced by Caravaggio, Gentileschi is considered to be one of the most accomplished painters of the early Baroque period. She was trained by her father and well known artist Orazio Gentileschi as well as artist Agostino Tassi. Tassi raped the 18 year old Artemisia and promised to marry her but was eventually arrested. Tassi’s trial received a great deal of attention, and negatively affected her reputation, prompting her to move to Florence where she had a successful career.

As a result of her experiences, the heroines in Gentileschi’s paintings, depict powerful women enacting revenge on malicious males. Her style was influenced by dramatic realism and strong contrast of light and dark.

At a time of a male dominated art world, Gentileschi was the first female painter to be accepted as a member of the Acadamia di Arte del Disengo in Florence, Italy. She was also one of the first female artists to paint historical and religious themes, a skill thought to be beyond the intellectual abilities of women.

2. Judy Chicago – July 20, 1939: Born Judy Cohen, Judy Chicago is an American artist (sculpture, drawings, paintings), author, feminist, and educator, whose work and life are “models for an enlarged definition of art, an expanded role for the artist, and a woman’s right to freedom of expression”.

Between 1974 and 1979, with the participation of hundreds of volunteers, Chicago created her most well-known work, “The Dinner Party“. The multimedia project, a symbolic history of women in Western Civilization, has been seen by more than one million viewers during its 16 exhibitions held at venues in six countries.

Chicago has a Bachelor and Masters of Art from the University of California Los Angeles. She has received numerous awards, and has honorary doctorates from Duke University, Lehigh University, Smith College, and Russell Sage College. Chicago’s work is housed in the collections of major museums including: The British Museum, Brooklyn Museum, Getty Trust, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, National Museum of Women in the Arts, and the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art.

3. Julia Margaret Cameron – June 11 1815 – January 26, 1879: Born in Calcutta, India to a British official of the East India Company and the daughter of French aristocrats, Cameron was educated in France but returned to India in 1838 and married jurist Charles Hay Cameron. The couple moved to London in 1848 where they were aligned with the elite circles of Victorian society.

Cameron did not take up photography until the age of 48, when her daughter gave her a camera as a gift. She enlisted friends and family for her photographs and used an artistic approach that differed from the commercial studios of the time – an approach for which she was often criticized.

Known for her closely framed portraits and illustrative allegories based on religious and literary works, some of Cameron’s subjects include Charles Darwin, Alfred Lord Tennyson, Robert Browning, and others.

Cameron’s photographs, particularly her closely cropped portraits, had a significant impact on the evolution of modern photography. As well, her portraits of major historical figures, are often the only remaining photographs and record of the time. She was meticulous in registering her photographs with the copyright office and kept detailed records which is why many of her works survive today.

4. Elizabeth Catlett Mora – April 15, 1915 -April 2, 2012: Born in Washington, D.C., Catlett graduated from Howard University in Washington, D.C.in 1935, where she studied design, printmaking and drawing. In 1940, she studied under painter Grant Wood and sculptor Henry Stinson and became the first student to receive an M.F.A. in sculpture from the State University of Iowa .

In 1947, Catlett married Mexican artist Francisco Mora, and made Mexico her permanent home. In 1958, she became the first female professor of sculpture and head of the sculpture department at the National Autonomous University of Mexico, School of Fine Arts, San Carlos, in Mexico City where she continued to teach until her retirement in 1975.

Catlett is best known for her abstract wood and stone sculptures of archetypal African American women. She is also an accomplished printmaker and has produced lithographs and linocuts that celebrate the heroic lives of African American women.

Catlett’s work reflects a social and political concern that she shares with the Mexican muralists. Using her art to bring awareness to causes including the African-American experience and the plight of the lower classes, many of her works illustrate the diverse roles of women as mothers, workers, and activists.

Catlett received many awards including the Women’s Caucus For Art and has an honorary Doctorate from Pace University, in New York. She is represented in numerous collections throughout the world including the Institute of Fine Arts, Mexico, the Museum of Modern Art, NY, Museum of Modern Art, Mexico, National Museum of Prague, Library of Congress, Washington, D.C., and the Metropolitan Museum, NY.

Catlett remained an active artist until her death on April 2, 2012 at the age of 96.

5. Berthe Morisot – January 14, 1841 – March 2, 1895: Born to a prosperous family in Bourges, Cher, France, Berthe Morisot was encouraged at an early age to become an artist and studied with neoclassical painter Geoffroy-Alphonse Chocarne.

Characteristic of Impressionist art, Morisot painted her daily experiences and reflected 19th century cultural expectations of her gender and class. Her works include landscapes, family and domestic life, portraits, garden settings and boating scenes.

Morisot worked with pastels and watercolors and oil, and experimented with lithography and drypoint etching in her later years. She first exhibited at the Salon de Paris in 1864 at the age of 23 and continued to show there regularly until 1873, just prior the first Impressionist exhibition.

Morisot grew to be a key member of the group of Impressionists. Her home was a meeting place for painters and writers including Renoir, Degas, Mary Cassatt, and Stéphane Mallarmé. She participated in the Drouot sale of 1875, where the artists were greatly criticized. Her paintings, however, were purchased at slightly higher prices than those of Renoir, Monet, and Sisley.

Undervalued for over a century, she is now considered among the finest of the Impressionist painters.

Sources:Artemisia Gentileschi.com, Met Museum, Wikipedia, Judy Chicago.com, Met Museum, MoMA, Wikipedia, Cleveland Museum of Art, Wikipedia

Read more 5 Women Artist You Should Know posts.

5 Women Artists You Should Know: Vol. 2

August 5, 2009 By Wendy Campbell

1. Laura Wheeler Waring – May 16, 1887 – Feb. 3, 1948: Born in Hartford, Connecticut, Waring attended the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, graduating in 1914. Waring was awarded the Cresson Traveling Scholarship and studied Expressionism and Romanticism at the Academie de la Grande Chaumiere in Paris.

Much of Waring’s work was focused on portraiture though she also painted still life and landscapes. She was among the first artists displayed in the United State’s first all African American art exhibit that was held in 1927 by the Harmon Foundation – an organization that promoted the work of African American artists, writers, educators and scientists. In 1943, the Harmon Foundation commissioned Waring to paint the series “Portraits of Outstanding American Citizens of Negro Origin”, which included W.E.B. DuBois, George Washington Carver, Marian Anderson, and James Weldon Johnson.

From the late 1920’s until her death in 1948, Warren worked as an art instructor and director of the art and music departments at Pennsylvania’s Cheyney State Teachers College (now Cheyney University).

2. Georgia O’keeffe – Nov 15, 1887 – March 6, 1986: Considered to be a pioneer of American modernism, O’keeffe was born in Wisconsin and studied at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 1905 and at the Art Students League in New York in 1907.

From 1908-1910, O’keeffe worked as a commercial artist in Chicago for a few years and then moved to Charlottesville in 1910 with her family, where she studied drawing at the University of Virginia. In the following eight years, O’Keeffe studied art and art education, taught art, traveled, and worked on developing her unique style – a blend of symbolism, abstraction, and photography with subjects including cityscapes, landscapes, figure studies, and flower paintings.

After 1929, O’keeffe she spent most summers painting in New Mexico and moved there permanently in 1949. She worked in pencil and watercolor until 1982 and then in clay from the mid-1970s to 1984 due to her failed eyesight. O’keeffe received numerous awards, including the American Medal of Freedom and the National Medal of Arts.

3. Elaine Fried de Kooning – March 12, 1918 – Feb. 1, 1989: Born in Brooklyn, NY, de Kooning was a successful painter, sculptor, draughtswoman, printmaker, writer, and wife of fellow artist Willem de Kooning. She studied in New York at the Leonardo da Vinci Art School, the American Art School, the Academy school, and with Willem de Kooning.

De Kooning was interested in both figurative and abstract art, acknowledging the influence of her husband and of the Abstract Expressionists of the New York School. Her first solo exhibition occurred at the Stable Gallery in New York in 1952 and she presented almost annually at numerous institutional and commercial galleries throughout the United States.

Portraits were an important part of De Kooning’s output, though she never considered them to her main focus as a painter. When producing portraits, she worked on several canvases at the same time, creating three or more versions of the same portrait.

While her artistic reputation was somewhat overshadowed by her husband’s fame, de Kooning was able to establish a name as an artist and as an art critic. As well, she taught at numerous institutions including Bard College, University of Georgia, University of Pennsylvania, University of California at Davis, in New York at the Cooper Union, Parsons School of Design, and Pratt Institute, and others.

4. Louise Bourgeois – December 25, 1911: Born in Paris, Bourgeois is perhaps best known for her spider sculptures titled “Maman”. She initially studied mathematics at the Sorbonne in 1932 but left to study art instead. In the mid to late 1930s, she studied at the École des Beaux-Arts, Académie de la Grande-Chaumière, École du Louvre, Atelier Fernand Léger, and other schools in Paris.

Bourgeois married American art historian Robert Goldwater, and in 1938, moved to New York where she studied for two years at the Art Students League. Bourgeois began her career as a painter and engraver, turning to wood sculpture in the late 1940’s.

In the mid 1950’s Bourgeois’ artwork explored issues such as internal distress, fear, vulnerability, and loss of control. She worked with bronze, plaster, and marble, and her previous rigid, upright sculptures evolved into smooth, organic shapes. In the 1960’s Bourgeois’ works became larger and were executed in bronze, carved stone, and rubber latex. During this time, she explored relationships between men and women in her artwork which became more sexually explicit.

Bourgeois’s achievements have been recognized with numerous honours and awards including National Medal of Arts and a grand prize in sculpture from the French Ministry Culture. She died on May 31, 2010 – creating artwork until her death.

5. Sonia Delaunay – Nov. 14, 1885 – Dec. 5, 1979: Born Sarah Stern (nicknamed Sonia), in the Ukraine, Delaunay moved to St. Petersburg at the age of five to live with a wealthy uncle, taking his surname, Terk. She studied art in Karlsruhe, Germany and in Paris in 1905, where she would live most of her life.

Delaunay married French painter Robert Delaunay with whom she had a son, Charles. Both Sonia and Robert developed an offshoot of cubism known as Orphism (aka Simultaneism). Orphism was similar to cubism in its abstraction but was based on the real world and used bright colours and repeating patterns similar in some aspects to Russian folk art.

Delaunay was a prolific artist working in many mediums. Throughout her career, she created paintings as well as public murals, theatrical, graphic, fashion, and interior designs, and designs for playing cards, ceramics, mosaics, and stained glass.

Delaunay received numerous awards for her work and in 1964 became the first living female artist to have a retrospective exhibition at the Louvre. In 1975 she was named an officer of the French Legion of Honor.

***Read the first installment of 5 Women Artists You Should Know***

Sources: PBS, Georgia O’Keeffe Museum, National Academy Museum and School of Fine Arts, Guggenheim, National Museum of Women in the Arts

5 Women Artists You Should Know

July 2, 2009 By Wendy Campbell

1. Frida Kahlo – July 6, 1907 – July 13, 1954. Born in Coyoacán, Mexico, Kahlo survived many difficult events in her life. She began to paint while recovering in bed from a bus accident in 1925 that left her disabled. Although she made a partial recovery, she was never able to bear children, had numerous miscarriages, and underwent 32 operations before her death. Her paintings, mostly self-portraits, deal directly with her health and physical challenges. Kahlo was influenced by indigenous cultures of Mexico and European influences including Realism, Symbolism, and Surrealism.

Kahlo’s work was not widely recognized until years after her death. She was often remembered only as artist Diego Rivera’s wife. It was not until the early 1980s, when the artistic movement in Mexico known as Neomexicanismo began, that she became very prominent.

2. Mary Cassatt – May 22, 1844 – June 14, 1926. Known for her depictions of women and children, Cassatt was one of the few active American artists in 19th century French avant-garde. The daughter of a prominent Pittsburgh family, she studied at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts in Philadelphia. She traveled throughout Europe, settling permanently in Paris in 1874. In that year she exhibited at the Salon and in 1877 met Degas, with whom she maintained a close relationship. His art and ideas had a strong influence on her own work though she did not imitate his style. He introduced her to the Impressionists and she participated in several exhibitions between 1879 – 1886.

While in France, Cassatt sent paintings back to exhibitions in the United States that were among the first impressionist works seen in the US. By advising wealthy American patrons on acquisitions, she also played a vital role in forming some of the most important collections of impressionist art in America.

3. Emily Carr – December 13, 1871 – March 2, 1945. Born in Victoria, British Columbia, Carr moved to San Francisco in 1890 to study art after the death of her parents. In 1899 she traveled to England to study at the Westminster School of Art in London and other studio schools in England. In 1910, she spent a year studying art at the Académie Colarossi in Paris, France before moving back to British Columbia permanently.

Carr was strongly influenced by the landscape and First Nations cultures of British Columbia and Alaska. She did not receive recognition as an artist until she was 57 years of age. In the 1920s she came into close contact with members of the prominent Group of Seven (artists) after being invited by the National Gallery of Canada to participate in an exhibition of Canadian West Coast Art, Native and Modern. She maintained a close relationship with the group and was included in their exhibitions.

Emily Carr is a Canadian icon. The fact that she was a woman challenged by the obstacles that faced women of her day, to become an artist of such originality and strength has made her a “darling of the Women’s Movement”.

4. Annie Leibovitz – October 2, 1949 – present. Born in 1949 in Connecticut, USA Leibovitz studied painting at the San Francisco Art Institute. She became interested in photography when she lived in the Philippines, where her father was stationed during the Vietnam War with the Air Force.

Leibovitz began photographing for Rolling Stone magazine in 1969 while still a student in San Francisco. Famous for her iconic images of celebrities, including John Lennon and Yoko Ono, in 1983 she became chief photographer for Vanity Fair. A regular contributor to Vogue as well, she is the winner of numerous awards and her work has been exhibited around the world. In addition to her portraiture, she has also photographed battered women, and the conflicts in Sarajevo, Bosnia, and Rwanda. In 2005, American Photo named her the single most influential photographer working today.

5. Anna Mary Robertson Moses – September 7, 1860 – December 13, 1961. Born in a farming community in Greenwich, N. Y, “Grandma Moses” began painting in her seventies after leaving a career in embroidery due to arthritis. A self-taught, renowned folk artist, Moses painted mostly scenes of rural life. In the years directly after World-War-II, Moses was one of the most successful and famous artists in America, and possibly the best known American artist in Europe.

Her simple realism and nostalgic subject matter with which she portrayed farm life and the rural countryside, gained her a large following. She was a prolific painter and during her lifetime she created more than 1,000 paintings. Moses received honorary doctoral degrees from Russell Sage College in 1949 and from the Moore Institute of Art, Science and Industry, Philadelphia, in 1951.

Sources: MOMA, Wikipedia, National Gallery of Art, Webmuseum Paris, Canadian Encyclopedia, Art History Archive, Contact Press Images, Wikipedia, New York Times