I know there have not been as many as men and I won’t even get into the reasons for that( another forum perhaps) but there are quite a few women who have been amazing and not had the Noteriety and the support that the some of the men have\. I can think of quite a few women painters and some have even managed to take care of birthin babies and taking care of a husband as well as pursuing their creative drive.

Maybe some of you can try and look these women up, do I hear a challenge?! Not the easy well known ones, come on make it a challenge….....

Women Artists from the Renaissance era include: Caterina dei Vigri, Maria Ormani, Sofonisba Anguissola, Lucia Anguissola, Lavinia Fontana, Barbara Longhi, Fede Galizia, Diana Scultori Ghisi, Esther Inglis, Marietta Robusti (daughter of Tintoretto), Properzia de’ Rossi, Mayken Verhulst, Levina Teerlinc, and Catarina van Hemessen. Many of these women it is true were daughters or wives of painters, which is the only way they had access to training and models.

Artists from the Baroque era include: Mary Beale, Rosalba Carriera, Élisabeth Sophie Chéron, Isabel de Cisneros, Josefa de Ayala better known as Josefa de Óbidos, Giovanna Garzoni, Artemisia Gentileschi, Judith Leyster, Maria Sibylla Merian, Louise Moillon, Maria van Oosterwijk, Clara Peeters, Luisa Roldán known as La Roldana, Rachel Ruysch and Elisabetta Sirani. Artemesia Gentileschi is one of my fav women from this time period. She portrayed the women in her paintings as much more that a pretty passive prop, with feeling and real movement and depth.

In the eighteenth and ninetheenth Centuries these women were working,
Rosalba Carriera, Giulia Lama, Anna Dorothea Therbusch, Angelica Kauffmann, Mary Moser, Maria Cosway, Anne Vallayer-Coster, Adelaide Labille-Guiard,Elisabeth Vigée-Le Brun, Constance Mayer, Marie Ellenrieder, Rosa Bonheur, Berthe Morisot, Mary Cassatt, Camille Claudel, Kate Greenaway, Suzanne Valadon, Victorine Meurent, Anna Boch, Enid Yandell and Lucy Bacon. Mary Cassatt, Camille Claudel and Berthe Morisote are some of my favorites.

Moving into the twentieth century there are obviously more women artist being recognized as restrictions on women lightened up. Women like, Lee Bontecou, Louise Bourgeois, Leonora Carrington, Elizabeth Catlett, Sonia Delaunay, Dulah Marie Evans, Bracha L. Ettinger, Helen Frankenthaler, Elisabeth Frink, Françoise Gilot, Natalia Goncharova, Grace Hartigan, Barbara Hepworth, Eva Hesse, Malvina Hoffman, Gwen John, Käthe Kollwitz, Lee Krasner, Frida Kahlo, Laura Knight, Barbara Kruger, Marie Laurencin, Tamara de Lempicka, Dora Maar, Maruja Mallo, Agnes Martin, Joan Mitchell, Alice Neel, Louise Nevelson, Georgia O’Keeffe, Bridget Riley, Verónica Ruiz de Velasco, Anne Ryan, Charlotte Salomon, Zinaida Serebriakova, Sr. Maria Stanisia, Suzanne Valadon and Nellie Walker.

My very, very, favorite from the surrealist period is someone who quite hard to find much information about. Her name is Dorthea Tanning and she was an amazing painter that worked under the shadow of another famous spouse. She was the fourth wife of Max Earnst. Her painting are oftentimes dark with heavy symbolism, and her painting technique was amazingly beautiful.

Her most famous Painting is Eine Kleine Nachtmusik 1943.

Birthday

The Guest Room

Death and the Maiden
http://www.tendreams.org/tanning/Death%20and%20the%20Maiden,%201953%201a.jpg

Death and the Maiden

forgot this one!

One of my favourite painters is a woman not even on your list.
Lyubov Popova – who became one of the mainstays of Russian Constructivism.
Disregarding the complications of agenda/politics/ideology/manifesto etc. She just produced amazing abstracts – a kind of hybrid Futurism and Kandinsky.
.

Air+Space+Man
.

Two Figures
.

Portrait of a Philosopher

Lee Krasner is on your list.
Totally overshadowed by a certain Mr. J Pollock.
Outstanding abstract expressionist in her own right
.

Portrait in Green
.

The Farthest Point
.

Gothic Landscape

Thank you guys for posting about this topic and for the one not on my list Mufa! There are so many wonderful women painters out there and my list was really quick and dirty so to speak! I will have to do more searching…...

Looking at the way that women artists have been treated throughout the past, and the shameful way that their art was virtually ignored and overshadowed by their male counterparts emphasizes, by contrast, how much we have moved on in the past twenty years. Take a look around a modern art college or RB or our own group and you will find that women artists are in the majority and often taking the lead, particularly when it comes to challenging established perceptions of ‘acceptable’ art. (which some people would argue is what ‘Art’ is all about)

One of my favourite artists was Cuban-born Ana Mendieta. She was not noted as a painter but she is one of the most significant women artists of the modern era. She made work in which she used her own body as the medium. This concept was used as a feminist assertion of the female body as a vehicle for personal and social expression.

Her emphasis on the female body as a realistic tool for the woman artist, challenged the male tradition of the idealized female nude, and hence the notion of idealized femininity that had held women artists captive for so long. Her work in the seventies and eighties began the change in attitude to women artists that has led to today’s recognition of equality (at least in the arts)

Mendieta sought a ‘dialog between the landscape and the female body’s return to the maternal source.’ She envisioned the female body as a primal source of life and sexuality, as a symbol of the ancient paleolithic goddesses. Between 1973 and 1980, Mendieta created a series, entitled “Silueta” or silhouette. Here, Mendieta used her body or images of her body in combination with natural materials.

The pieces were created and then photographed just before or during their destruction. The materials used were highly symbolic. In one work from the “Silueta” series, she outlined her figure with gunpowder, creating a shape reminiceint of prehistoric cave paintings. By setting it alight, she incorporates the ritualistic use of fire as a source of exorcism and purification. Her primary material was the earth itself. In her “Tree of Life” series, she covered her naked body with mud and posed against a tree. Ridding herself of her color and form, she is visually united with the tree, arms raised in supplication.

Ana Mendieta died at age thirty-six, the result of a fall from an apartment window in New York in 1985. Her husband, Carl Andre (the sculptor) claimed it was suicide. He was tried for her murder and was aquitted.

Thank you Kafka! Beautiful tribute to her and I don’t think it was a suicide,,sad and tragic early end to a wonderful artist!

Thank you for opening my eyes. Two of my favorites are Jennifer Bartlett and Cindy Sherman. I feel like Georgia O’Keefe has influenced my work somehow. kafka, that Tree of Life series by Mendieta is still a favorite. Greg

What a wonderful resource I have just discovered here! I work extensively with My Spirit Guides and do something called Past Connections...which refers to our past lives. Think was you like, I am not concerned about your reactions to this statement. What I would like to tell you about, is an amazing happening. It was through a painting/ trance or whatever you want to call it – I was introduced to an amazing Renaissance painter by the name of Artemisia Gentileschi, daughter of well-known Roman artist, Orazio Gentileschi (1563 – 1639), who was one of the first women artists to achieve recognition in the male-dominated world of post-Renaissance art. In an era when female artists were limited to portrait painting and imitative poses, she was the first woman to paint major historical and religious scenarios.
Born in Rome in 1593, she received her early training from her father, but after art academies rejected her, she continued study under a friend of her father, Agostino Tassi.
In 1612, her father brought suit against Tassi for raping Artemisia. There followed a highly publicised seven-month trial. The trauma of the rape and trial impacted on Artemisia’s painting. Her graphic depictions were cathartic and symbolic attempts to deal with the physical and psychic pain.
The heroines of her art, especially Judith, are powerful women exacting revenge on such male evildoers as the Assyrian general Holofernes. Her style was heavily influenced by dramatic realism and marked chiaroscuro (contrasting light and dark) of Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio…I tell you this amazing story of this wonderful woman because I feel she deserves to be mentioned in this forum.
While working on a different painting and researching the evidence and historical background for a client, who I believed had lived in the Court of Charles I of England…I discovered quite by chance,that a ceiling his wife Henriette Marie; had commissioned
was painted by Artemisia Gentileschi and her father Orazio Gentileschi.
The connection between these two events in history and their personal journey’s was quite remarkable. I had never heard of her prior to this commission and now she is a very important part of my life. I would like you all to remember her! Sophie Shapiro

What a fantastic story! Thank you for sharing. It has intrigued me to seek out her work. Here are a few of her paintings.

I have seen this self portait at The Art Gallery of New South Wales, it was part of their Self-Portrait show.

There is also a movie about her called Artemisia . Has anybody seen it?

Thank you for doing that for me! I’m not very technical! Oh! I really appreciate that!!!!!!!!S
Now you have her in all the splendour!

Thanks Sophie for opening this forum to me….I appreciate it tremendously and am also fascinated by Artemisia Gentileschi’s story, what life, I wonder why it so happened you fell onto her and it meant so much, but thats another story.
As to this topic I would like to add two painters :
Emily Carr canadian painter from the group of seven well at least she’s from the same period, living on the west coast alone, surronded by animals. She painted totems and the forests as though they had a special message to convey. I do think she was deeply connected to the energy of her surrondings but it never appeared as such in what she wrote…but her paintings are worth seeing.
There’s a great book on her Frida Kahlo and Georgia O’Keefe comparing their works and livfs, living alone mostly and dedicating their life to their inner world….....I’ll get the author for you…..
I was also thinking of Maria Elena Vieira da Silva a portuguese painter, she’s not around anymore but she had a considerable influence for Portugal…
Ah! lets not forget Camille Claudel not a painter but what a life! How a man can drive a woman artist to the edge not to say her own brother who was a famous writer called Paul Claudel who’s the one who got her locked up in an asylum!
There is a very good book about relationships between artists living in a couple by Nancy Huston called in french Le Journal de La Création….....a must to read about the complexity of women in art….and their relaltionship to men
Oh! and nearly forgot the Virginia Woolf “A room of ones own” .......
another one to read…...
There are so many artists women that have been erased from history books, written by men!
But times are changing!
Will be back I’m sure I’ll find more!

By the waycCould someone tell me how to put images in my message?

Here is a link to Camille Claudel
Sophie, here is a link about posting images

Sophie and Marylin Thank you so much for talking about Artemesia, she is my favorite Rennaisance painter, amazing woman! I studied her life and paintings extensively ion college and no I have not seen the movie but it is going on my netflicks!

Sophia thank you for bringing the others to our attention, I have to go look up the toeo painters I missed in my first post!

Kafka, you are awesome with your head full of info, Thank you!

I am so glad I posted about this it’s great to see all of the different women getting some kudos!!!!!!

Thank you Laurie. Can I suggest that if anyone wants to write up a longer piece on any of the above women artists (or any others that you may know of) it might be better to post them under their own individual entries – it will save this thread from becoming really long and I think that the least we can do is give them the equal status of their own entry (it is rather the point we are making!)

I posted the Camille Claudel entry 4 months ago, not only because I absolutely love her sculpture, but also in the hope that it would encourage more entries about relatively ‘obscure’ women artists. I am really pleased that you have picked up the baton Laurie with this excellent topic.

Thanks Kafka, will do!

Thanks Laurie for the posting and your research, and Kafka and others who have added to it! Great to see, and follow up on (when I have a moment!)

What a great group!
20 years ago, when I was an undergrad taking art history, there were no female artists in my art history book, and none covered in my lecture notes. As a grad student 15 years ago, I was fortunate to have taken a women in art course which filled in the gaps fairly well. So nice to see how times have changed!
My favorite is Kathe Kollwitz, so dangerous that Hitler sent the gestapo after her when she was in her 80’s!

Thanks all who have added to this great thread!!! lovin it! :)