Great Women Artists
Throughout the study of art history, male artists have dominated. For generations, only a handful of female artists made art history, asking aspiring female artists, "Where are all the great female artists?"
There are many reasons why women haven't received the acclaim they deserve until recently. Until 1860, women could not attend art schools or show their work in the salon exhibitions of the time, and even when they could, it was on a limited basis. Unfortunately, as more and more women entered elite art academies and began to show their work, much of it was undervalued or overlooked. With the onset of the Women's Movement in the 1960s, more and more female artists began to receive the recognition they deserved. Today, art history is being reexamined and artists who have fallen by the wayside are now being included and rewarded for their contributions to the evolution of art.
We've compiled a list of what we believe are some of the most important female artists past and present. We regret not having space to include all the women who have enriched important artistic movements over time. If we left out one of your favorites, we apologize.
1. Louise Elisabeth Vigee Le Brun (1755-1842)
Being a woman and a professional portraitist in the 18th century was unheard of. To be a woman and official portraitist for the Queen of France was unthinkable. However, Louise Elisabeth Vigée Le Brun achieved both. Madame Le Brun is best known for her portraits of the elite in the Rococo and Neoclassical styles. During his lifetime, he created around 660 portraits and 220 landscapes, some of which are in museums such as the Louvre, the Hermitage Museum, the National Gallery in London and the Metropolitan Museum of Art.
2. Rosa Bonheur (1822-1899)
Rosa Bonheur was widely recognized as the most famous female painter in France during the 19th century. His popularity arose from his breathtaking paintings of animals, especially horses and cattle. Rosa was luckier than most women who dreamed of becoming artists at that time, as her father, Oscar-Raymond Bonheur, was an established painter who taught her and always encouraged her artistic career.
3. Mary Cassatt (1844-1926)
American painter who lived in France, member of the famous group of male impressionists, who became known for his beautiful portraits of women, children and domestic life. Mary Cassatt was inspired by light, patterns, Japanese engraving and family intimacy, ending up inspiring male and female painters who came later with her techniques. His paintings are highly valued and are on display in private collections as well as in the greatest museums in the world.
4. Aurelia de Souza (1866-1922)
She was one of the few Portuguese women who, in her own right, won a place in the gallery of great Portuguese painters of the second half of the 19th century, along with other renowned artists. His works are composed of diverse themes, such as portraits (his favorite genre - whether self-portraits, family portraits, etc.), landscapes (sketches or finished, resulting from his travels, inspired by his home or rural Porto) and everyday scenes that portray, in tenebrous interiors, children or women doing their domestic tasks.
6. Georgia O'Keeffe (1887-1986)
Georgia O'Keeffe's art can be seen on famous museum walls, calendars, mugs and sweatshirts. Proclaimed by many art critics as the “Mother of American Modernism”, her legacy of abstract art continues to influence artists of our time. The artist is best known for her large, provocative flowers and skull paintings, but her work ranges from the landscapes of the American West to the skyscrapers of New York City.
7. Lyubov Popova (1889-1924)
This Russian avant-garde artist was ahead of her time as one of the first female leaders of the Cubo-Futurism movement developed in Russia. This movement combined the style of Italian Futurism with French Cubism. From there, he explored the suprematist movement, which emerged around 1913 in Russia. Its basis was the use of geometric shapes such as squares, rectangles and circles. In addition to her iconic paintings, Lyubov Popova is also known for her fabric prints, book covers, and posters.
8. Alma Thomas (1891-1978)
During the Civil Rights Movement in the United States, Alma Thomas' work stood out as a beacon of hope and optimism. This African-American artist dedicated her life to art after retiring from teaching. Her rise to fame skyrocketed when her colorful expressionist paintings were exhibited at the Whitney Museum of Art, making her the first African-American woman to hold a solo exhibition at the museum.
9. Frida Kahlo (1907-1954)
Whenever we talk about famous artists, the nameFrida Kahlo is always at the top of the list! His works capture the culture of his native Mexico, while questioning social, political and cultural issues. These themes are just one of the many reasons why it remains so popular today. With bright colors and a folkloric and surrealist style,Frida Kahlo created artwork inspired by nature and Mexican artifacts, and painted numerous self-portraits and portraits of others. She is considered a major influence by many contemporary female artists.
10. Maria Helena Vieira da Silva (1908-1992)
In abstract compositions,Maria Helena Vieira da Silva involved his work in a poetry of colors and shapes, inspired by the big cities. With a smooth stroke, he worked in sculpture, illustrations, theatrical decorations and also dedicated himself to tapestry. The artist worked and lived essentially in Paris, however it is possible to discover traces of Lisbon in her work. Due to the Second World War and the Estado Novo, she took refuge in Brazil with her husband, the painter Arpad Szenes. It was mainly from the post-war period that his work began to be recognized and celebrated nationally and internationally, with several commissions and exhibitions. Learn more about the artist at 5 Little Known Facts about Maria Helena Vieira da Silva.
11. Louise Bourgeois (1911-2010)
Best known for her spider sculptures and other large-scale works, Louise Bourgeois was also an accomplished painter and printmaker. He enjoyed a long career, in which he produced a substantial body of work. This French-American artist explored many themes through art, including family, sexuality and death. Louise Bourgeois is not associated with any particular art group, but her work is treated by many as feminist and surrealist art.
12. Gwendolyn Knight (1913-2005)
A person's culture and family history can be a great inspiration for your creations. This was the case for Gwendolyn Knight, who for most of her pictorial career focused on African-American culture and history. Gwendolyn Knight painted portraits, city scenes, landscapes and still lifes in oil, watercolor and gouache. Later, Gwendolyn Knight created engravings and monoprints of animals in a lyrical style in response to her feelings about African dance and theatre.
13. Lygia Clark (1920-1988)
Lygia Clark, was a Brazilian artist best known for her painting and installation works. Often associated with Brazilian constructivist movements of the mid-20th century and the Tropicália movement.Lygia Clark considered the work of art as an experience or as a body that interacts with the spectator. So his works dealt with the relationship between inside and outside and how the viewer discovers and reacts to his works.
14. Yayoi Kusama (1929-)
Yayoi Kusama is a Japanese avant-garde artist best known for her use of polka dots and electric colors. His works span sculpture, installation and painting, as well as film, fashion and literature. As a conceptual artist, she infiltrates feminism, pop art and abstract impressionism in her works.
15. Lourdes Castro (1930-2022)
Lourdes Castro is considered one of the most important contemporary Portuguese artists. The Portuguese artist managed to make an international mark through her interventions, full of a unique look at reality. Discreet but much admired figure, who has received several awards in recent decades (EDP, Vieira da Silva, AICA) and recognitions, having been decorated by the President of the Republic last June with the Military Order of Sant'Iago da Espada", says the note, which recalls several retrospectives that it was the subject of.
16. Helena Almeida (1934-2018)
Portuguese artist known for her work in photography, performance art, body art, painting and drawing. He exhibited individually for the first time in 1967, presenting geometric and abstract compositions in which he questioned pictorial space and explored the physical limits of painting, an issue that would be developed in his future work. From the end of the 1960s onwards, he began to focus on intense reflection on self-representation and on the tension between the body, space and the work: his own body was then seen as an object and support for the work, thematic which since 1975 has been developed through the manipulation of media such as painting, drawing, engraving, installation, photography and video. An artist with an intense conceptual matrix, his rigorous and original plastic research has earned him strong national and international recognition since the 1970s.
17. Paula Rego (1935-)
Introducing expressive, profound and ambiguous elements into his works,Paula Rego gained recognition as one of the greatest artists of our time, nationally and internationally. From abstractionism to conceptualism, his pieces are part of a figurative field of their own: «the beautiful grotesque». In surreal compositions with a cruelty - both subtle and explicit - the Portuguese artist demonstrates her own imagery, the brutality of Portuguese folktales, dysfunctional family relationships, political systems and social structures. Women and girls are placed in the foreground, and animals often replace humans. Between life and art,Paula Rego demonstrates its concerns and convictions, for example, the production of the series entitled «Abortion» for agreeing with the decriminalization of the voluntary interruption of pregnancy.
Armanda Passos stood out in Portuguese artistic production with its full of deep meanings linked to its intimate space. In the vivid colors of his portraits, we see, in a dreamlike way, his interpretations, especially of women, as a figure and representation. In addition to female figures, his works show his relationship with nature, in particular with birds, and through the development of a revolutionary technique with serigraphy. She did not see herself noticed in painting or drawing and did not envisage an artistic future, however destiny made her one of the most predominant Portuguese artists, marking the art of the late 20th and early 21st centuries. He left a body of work full of paintings, drawings and serigraphs that represent a talent that manifested itself smoothly. Currently, his pieces are present in several collections, namely the National Museum of Contemporary Art, the Modern Art Center of the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation, the Serralves Foundation and the Museu Amadeo de Souza-Cardoso.
19. Marina Abramovich (1946-)
A famous Serbian-American painter and performance artist, Marina Abramovich invites viewers to participate in exploring the limits of mind and body. Marina Abramovich uses his own body as a canvas to face the pain and limitations of the human body, in what is known as body art. Marina Abramovich is recognized as one of the most provocative and important artistic presences of our time.
20. Graça Morais (1948-)
Wrapped in mystery and surprise,Graça Morais creates works that convey to the viewer his memory of the rural world, of the village of Vieiro in Trás-os-Montes, where he was born and raised. In a relationship between the body, thought and experience, the artist paints with strong strokes the faces of a village, the stories of the Portuguese people, their customs, the way of working and the power of motherhood. In addition to painting, he created illustrations for books and tile panels in various buildings such as the Caixa Geral de Depósitos Building in Lisbon, the Belarusian Metro Station in Moscow, among others. Graça Morais represented Portugal at the XVII Bienal de São Paulo in 1983. In 2008, the Center for Contemporary Art was inaugurated Graça Morais (CACGM) in Bragança, designed by the architect Souto Moura, which has a nucleus of several rooms dedicated to the painter's work.
