Request Our Free Catalogue
Thank you for contacting us.
We will reply to you in next 2 working days.
Women have been heavily involved in art, and throughout the centuries, they have contributed innumerable paintings and sculptures to galleries and museums worldwide. Here, we showcase five of the many influential female artists who have impacted the art world.
Born in 1844, Mary Cassatt was an American painter who inspired many women who came after her. Although her family objected to her desire to become an artist, Cassatt studied at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts and eventually moved to Paris to study with the French masters of painting. Her passion suffered for several years as she struggled to find employment and patronage. Eventually, in 1871, she was commissioned to paint copies of paintings by Corregia by a Roman Catholic bishop, which provided her with much-needed funds.
Many French impressionists influenced Cassatt during her time in Europe, particularly Edward Degas. The two shared a long period of collaboration and were lifelong friends until Degas died in 1917. At the time, many regarded Cassatt as perfectly exemplifying the New Woman archetype that emerged - she was a professional, successful woman who never married and supported women’s suffrage throughout her life.
Cassatt’s work was featured in prominent places throughout American history. She was commissioned to paint a mural about the modern woman for the World’s Columbian Exposition in Chicago in 1893, which showed women as people in their own right. Two of her works also appeared in the Armory Show of 1913, a key turning point in American art history. Both images were of a mother and child, figures which defined her work despite her childless life.
Yayoi Kusama is a Japanese artist who works in many different mediums. Inspired by American abstract impressionism, she moved to New York City in 1958 and gained major attention in the 1960s with her happenings, in which naked participants were painted with bright polka dots.
Kusama’s work is heavily inspired by the vivid hallucinations that she began experiencing as a child. She described them as being flashes of light, fields of dots, and patterns in fabrics coming to life. She covered canvas, household objects, and assistants with her trademark polka dots before creating sculptures of pumpkins and her trademark mirror rooms. These mirror rooms create breathtaking illusions of infinite space with neon balls, and installations can be found in galleries worldwide.
Kusama remains immensely popular to this day, and she remains a working artist, even at the age of 92. Her most recent work includes A Bouquet of Love I Saw in the Universe, which incorporates her trademark polka dots on gigantic tentacles.
Renaissance painter Sofonisba Anguissola was born into a relatively poor noble family. Despite this, she received an excellent education and even went on to study informally under Michelangelo. In a time when women were not allowed to study from live models, Anguissola made history by becoming an official court painter for the Spanish king and queen.
Her work was originally attributed to male painters of the time, including Leonardo da Vinci and Giovanni Battista Moroni. However, scholarship has revealed that she has painted around fifty works, although many of her creations may not have survived.
Anguissola’s influence throughout history has been huge. She was a successful female painter when women were expected only to marry and have children, and she inspired a new generation of female artists, including Lavinia Fontana and Artemisia Gentileschi. It is also widely believed that her work influenced Caravaggio when he painted Boy Bitten by a Lizard.
Georgia O’Keeffe is one of the most celebrated artists in America. Known for her experiments in American modernism and the abstract nature of her work, she trained as an artist at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and then the Art Students League of New York.
O’Keeffe’s work consisted of many abstract impressions of flowers, which many interpreted as female genitalia, although O’Keeffe herself denied this intention repeatedly. After living in New York with her husband, the photographer Alfred Steiglitz, she started spending time in the Southwest, which served as inspiration for her paintings of animal skulls. Despite being a prominent female artist, O’Keeffe refused to identify with the feminist art movement and preferred to simply be known as an artist rather than a female artist.
Georgia O’Keeffe has been referred to as one of the first American artists to practise pure abstraction and the mother of American modernism. Her legacy continues to this day, and due to her paintings of the Southwest, she had a species of dinosaur named after her in 2006.
An influential African American artist, Edmonia Lewis was an American sculptor of mixed African American and Native American heritage. Little is known about her early life, but she was orphaned when she was just nine and lived with her aunts near Niagara Falls for several years. She was then sent to Oberlin Academy Preparatory School and the Oberlin Collegiate Institute, where she faced severe racism and prejudice.
Her art career began in 1864 when she decided to embark on a career as a sculptor. Some of her most famous works include Forever Free (1867), a celebration of Black liberation, and The Death of Cleopatra (1876), which displays the queen in the throes of death - a piece that drew thousands of viewers at the Centennial Exposition in Philadelphia.
Lewis passed away in 1907 in London after she relocated to Europe. Her legacy remains evident to this day, as she succeeded as a Black and Native American woman in an era dominated by white men.
Many people cannot name even three women in Art - in fact, only 30% of people could - despite women contributing to art for thousands of years.
Even though some of their voices have been silenced, many female artists have made outstanding contributions to art, creating unique pieces that have massively influenced the art world through the centuries.
Thank you for contacting us.
We will reply to you in next 2 working days.