Women's Art Wednesday

Today we’re talking about a 20th-century painter with an eye for fashion – it’s Gertrude Abercrombie! Abercrombie came by her interest in the arts naturally, growing up with both her parents holding careers as opera singers. During her formal education she studied Romance languages and figure drawing. She eventually landed a job drawing gloves for Mesirow Department Store ads and working as an artist for Sears. From there, she transitioned into painting by joining art fairs in Chicago, becoming known as a painter for the Works Progress Administration and the Chicago Society of Artists. Abercrombie is remembered for her landscapes, self-portraits, and still-lifes inspired by the Surrealist movement (and you know we’ll never pass up on opportunity to talk Surrealists.) Abercrombie’s art shows skill with the art movements of her time and embodies an era when multiple styles reflected society's ideals. Her paintings focus on both realism and dreams, often including objects that she identified with herself like cats and brooms–and you know we love all the witchy vibes that implies. Abercrombie’s work shows a unique blend of popular styles, and serves as a reminder that no one and nothing is just “one thing.” Please scroll through and enjoy the work of Gertrude Abercrombie!

Raise your hand if you knew there were once art competitions at the Olympic Games? 🙋‍♀️ In 1948, Letitia Marion Hamilton won a bronze medal at the London Olympic Games for the oils and watercolors art competition. (You can see that winning piece in the first slide!) Hamilton hailed from a family of artists—many of them women—including her great-grandmother, aunt, and cousins. She studied at the Dublin Metropolitan School of Art where she showed interest in Art Nouveau. Her first exhibit was in 1902, where she exhibited more than 200 paintings at the Royal Hibernian Academy. She was also a founding member of the Society of Dublin Painters. 

At the London 1948 Summer Olympics, there were 5 categories of art: architecture, literature, music, painting, and sculpture. All works were inspired by sport-related themes. The art was displayed at the Victoria and Albert Museum, displaying works from 27 different countries. 1948 was the final year that the Olympics included art competitions since they begun including the. in 1912. Following the London games, it was decided to just hold art exhibitions rather than competitions in the future. So as we watch women around the world continue to make history at the Olympics this month, here’s to a woman artist who is part of their ranks. 🥰🏅

Hey hey, happy WAW. Today we are talking about an artist who doesn’t shy away from the hard topics and redefines mediums as well as icons–it’s Dotty Attie! The beloved Attie is a feminist artist known for re-imagining well-known pieces of media. Her redesigns cover a wide range of iconic imagery, including famous paintings, photography, and even film stills. In her re-imagined world of art history, Attie takes the works of famous artists such as Vermeer and Caravaggio, copies the painting, but hyper-focuses on the sitter. Her approach creates a dynamic narrative about the subject, often depicting them in disarray. This portrayal shows the subject as inherently more human than object, where the paintings' original styles tend to objectify the sitter. Attie is also known for examining themes of American sentimentality and contrasting Americana nostalgia with harsher realities of American culture. Attie does not shy away from the difficult topics in her work and uses imagery to explore the dichotomies of modern life. Of her work she says, ‘my work is really about our secret selves, the parts of ourselves that we don’t really share with anybody else.’ Dotty Attie has earned acclaim throughout her career for her poignant and well-crafted work. Please scroll and enjoy another week’s worth of fantastic work by a woman artist.

If you take the time today to swing by the Art Institute of Chicago, you’ll be in luck to see a current exhibition called “Christina Ramberg: A Retrospective.” The show focuses on the short but exceptional artistic career of Christina Ramberg, featuring a staggering 100 works. Ramberg is known for her fragmented depictions of female bodies, focusing on figural elements of clothing, and garments, often focused on the torso area. While the paintings concentrate on different women’s body types, Ramberg questioned gender presentation and society’s idealization of body types. The show also includes some quilts that she experimented with in the 1980s and her final paintings that had more of a dark geometric abstraction, again, focusing on the torso. The show also includes her sketchbooks and her “informal archive of ephemera” which allows viewers to understand her artistic practice and what inspired her to create the paintings. Ramberg’s pieces are stark, often monochromatic, and refuse to let the viewer look away. Ramberg tragically passed away in 1995 from frontotemporal dementia at the young age of 49, but her artwork continues to speak to audiences and draw praise today. Those of you in the Chicago area, don’t miss this phenomenal exhibition on a woman artist!

Today we’re taking a step into the three-dimensional, with the work of one magnificent potter. Magdalene A. N. Odundo DBE is a contemporary potter from Kenya. Her pieces are symbolic, visually interesting, and built on a foundation of global pottery skill and knowledge. So without further ado, let’s talk about this phenomenal ceramic artist!
Odundo received an education at Kabete National Polytechnic in Kenya and at the Cambridge School of Art. She worked for a time in Britain, but often returned to Kenya and Nigeria to study millennia-old hand-building and low-firing pottery techniques. Odundo also deepened her knowledge of the medium by taking trips to New Mexico to study the polished blackware pottery of the esteemed San Ildefonso Pueblo potters. Historically women primarily created pottery in Africa–and in many parts of the world for that matter–and Obundo honors those traditions through metaphorical references to the female body in her pieces. Her work is not meant for utilization but rather as vessels of pure form and color. In Odundo’s work, the physical form of the human body, particularly the female body, and the form of the piece are inextricably linked. Odundo’s work shows a skill over the medium and an attention to some of the most meticulous and well-regarded techniques pottery has to offer.

Today we’re talking about a 19th-century Bohemian trendsetter unparalleled in the art of serving up the moody vibes. It’s painter Romaine Brooks!
Romaine Brooks launched her painting career in the 19th century, and her early works became quickly known for their muted color palette of black, white, and gray. Brooks displayed her work in her first Parisian exhibition in 1910, a moment truly defining her career when many art critics in attendance compared her reclining n**e to the likes of famous (and at the time, popular) artists Francisco Goya and Edouard Manet. Brooks is known for trendsetting all on her own and creating works diverting in their style from the time’s contemporary art movements. She was herself known for her androgynous appearance, challenging the status quo of women’s attire in the 1920s, and enjoying an unconventional Bohemian lifestyle in Paris. (Which is really the dream, isn’t it?) Her art continues to empower women and gender studies to this day, and saw a revival in popularity in the 1980s during the first wave of feminist art history. Brooks broke down stereotypes through her larger-than-life persona and ability to take control of the narrative of women in art by depicting n**e women without the aspect of the male gaze, and her work left an undeniable mark on art history and feminist theory.

Today on WAW we are featuring an artist with ties to some of the most prominent art movements of the twentieth century–it’s painter Gwendolyn Knight! Knight was born in Barbados, West Indies, but moved to the US with her foster family at the young age of 7. Knight painted throughout her life and, upon moving to New York City with her family as a teenager, became very influenced by the modern artwork of the Harlem Renaissance. There she graduated high school and began studying fine art at the prestigious Howard University in 1931. Sadly, Knight had to quit her studies at Howard in 1933 due to the difficulties of the Great Depression. This did not impact her artistic creation though, as she moved to Harlem and had the wonderful opportunity to study with another giant in art history, Augusta Savage. Knight loved creating oil paintings of her friends, studies of dancers, and dabbling in watercolor landscapes. Knight created paintings with bright colors and figural compositions of her personal experiences that connected to her West African heritage. She was also known for experimenting with prints, etchings, and lyrical sketches–AKA, a woman of many talents, which you know we love here on WAW. She traveled around the US and Nigeria throughout her career, where she learned different art techniques and created a stylistic blend all her own. In 1971, she began teaching at the University of Washington School of Art. Shortly after, the Seattle Art Museum exhibited Knight’s first solo exhibition which turned into shows around the country. Knight was a life-long painter who contributed to a number of prominent art movements and groups, and we never get tired of looking through her lively pieces. Please give it up for this impressive artist and career!

There is something just so gripping in the work of today’s feature. Her photographs are striking, thoughtful, and showcase individuals and their reality, defying more polished and posed standards of 20th-century photography. Without further ado, it’s Diane Arbus! Arbus, a photographer known for capturing her subjects as humans rather than objects, was born in New York in 1923. Arbus was born into a wealthy family and pursued artistic endeavors from an early age. She eventually picked up the camera, and started operating a successful corporate photography business with her husband contributing to publications like Vogue and Harper’s Bazaar. The corporate life eventually lost its luster for Arbus, and she turned her camera to the streets of New York City to capture the lives and personalities of everyday folks. Arbus befriended her subjects, often photographing them in their own spaces. She was known for capturing those who were pushing the boundaries of their identity and living outside of the status quo. Her work is noted for the intimacy and reverence she brings to her subjects, who were most often just regular people depicted in a medium traditionally used to emphasize “importance.” The images are unique, salient, and eye-catching. We hope you enjoy the work of this one-of-a-kind photographer!

Hello hello! Today’s WAW is coming in a little heavy, featuring a woman artist from nineteenth-century England who focused on the hardships faced by women and children in Victorian society. Emily Mary Osborn was a genre painter (i.e., a painter who depicts scenes of every-day life, rather than scenes from history or mythology) living in the UK. From a young age, her mother encouraged her to pursue art in a professional manner. With this encouragement, Osborn quickly started attending classes at the Dickenson Academy in London. At 17 Osborn was invited to show her work at the Royal Academy annual exhibition and continuously did so in the following decades. The Royal Academy did not admit women as pupils until 1860, but Osborne was allowed to sell her work in the annual exhibits. Nameless and Friendless (1857) is one of her most renowned paintings, as she depicts the hardships women artists faced during this period being taken seriously in a setting that did not value their contributions. Her paintings are stark, melancholy, and show a skill over the prominent art movements of the time as the art world pivoted away from history painting and moved for more realistic subject matter.

Hey hey and happy WAW. The WAW team recently took a trip to Sweden (you know we love us some ABBA) and had the unique opportunity to explore work by Swedish women artists in history. One stand out fav was the talented Ester Almqvist, (1869-1934) who is known today as a pioneer of modern art in Sweden. Almqvist’s early work adopts the much-loved Impressionist style, which took a distinctly melancholy feel in her work. She later transitioned her work to a Post-Impressionist and Expressionist style (adopting more fantastical colors and shapes than her earlier works), showing her up-to-date connection with global art movements happening during her career. Like many women artists, Almqvist didn’t receive full recognition for her skill until after her death, although a number of other prominent women artists in Sweden worked to promote her work toward the end of her life and strengthen her legacy in years after. Almqvist spent her life creating art and following modern trends, and established herself as an early (and skillful!) voice of modern painting in her region. 😍

Today we’re going big here on WAW with the installations of contemporary artist, Shadia Alem. Alem is a notable artist from Saudi Arabia whose work often touches upon women and the lack of women's representation in art around the world and in her home country. She started as a painter but expanded into her surrounding space with installation. She always uses her city as a way to reflect on the world and how the world reflects on her city. She is known for her installation, The Black Arch, which was featured in the Venice Biennale in 2011. The installation was in fact the the first time the country of Saudia Arabia was featured in the show, which is one of the most significant contemporary art shows in the world. Shadia Alem created this work alongside her sister, Raja Alem, who is a writer. The work is moving, and by nature of its large installation, demands to be seen. We hope you enjoy!

“The camera is not the obstacle, it is one’s self!” –Kati Horna
Kati Horna (1912-2000) was a 20th-century photographer known for using the medium to express a global perspective, and is yet another artist whose life charts a tumultuous century in Europe. Horna, born in Hungary, fled several separate political conflicts during her career, which began when she moved to Berlin to pursue a degree in politics. She was eventually forced to leave Germany when Hi**er rose to power, and returned to Budapest before moving to Paris in 1933. While in France she photographed bustling scenes like Parisian flea markets with an eye to capture the complexities of urban life which fascinated her. During the Spanish Civil War she turned her camera to activism and moved to Spain to capture images of women and children dealing with the war and the worker’s revolution. Horna also worked as a photojournalist for the feminist journal Mujeres Libres while covering events in Spain. She was once again uprooted with the outbreak of WWII, this time relocating to Mexico City. There, she lived among other European exiled artists, including two of WAW’s fav babes, Leonora Carrington and Remedios Varo. Perhaps because of her exposure to prominent Surrealist artists like Carrington and Varo, Horna herself began to dabble with surreal features in her work. She used the technique of “superimposition” to create a images of dismembered doll bodies reminiscent of other Surrealist works examining the body and, in particular, the female body. (Okay, we admit it, these ones are a little terrifying.) Horna’s dip into Surrealist styles is hardly surprising given her career-long political and social consciousness, as the Surrealist movement itself sought to question traditional systems of power and the way we interpret reality and social constructs. While the influence is certainly there, Horna herself never fully identified as a “Surrealist artist” and continued her work as a photojournalist as well as a creative artist, and worked for various publications while living in Mexico City. Horna’s work captures the many roles of photography as a medium for both creativity and exposure of real-world events.

Happy world book day! ✨ Here is our pride and joy!

Spring is springing and that means we’re ready for something light and playful over here on WAW. When it comes to whimsical ceramics, contemporary artist Shio Kusaka takes the cake. Kusaka, known for her playful approach to clay, explores linework and color in her pieces to expand the boundaries of what is “fitting” for ceramic art. Kusaka adds intricate lines and finite details to her three dimensional work, creating pieces utilizing methods mostly seen in drawing. Her pieces hail from other movements in art history, including minimalism, abstraction, and 18th-century Japanese art.
Kusaka also draws on childhood memories of her grandmother’s tea ceremonies in her work. “After being served, you spend time observing-the cup, the spoon. This taught me to stop and look,” explains the artist. Ceramics are a uniquely personal form of art, being intended for use and interaction with the viewer, and we love the intentionality and playful lovability Kusaka brings to her work. We invite you to scroll, enjoy, and go make yourself a cup of tea in a beautiful cup.

There is really no one-way to describe the work of today’s WAW artist. Dreamy, playful, figurative, unsettling, beautiful and, at times, terrifying, today we’re talking about contemporary painter and sculptor Hayv Kahraman. Kahraman was born in Baghdad in 1981, but was forced to flee the country with her family at only 11 years old. Kahraman got her artistic start by studying graphic design in Italy, though these days she mostly works in painting and sculpture creating pieces influenced by her own experience as a refugee. Her work deals in themes of decolonizing both the body and nature, and doesn’t shy away from the reality of violence and fear that war, colonization, and global tension cause–particularly on the bodies of women. The pieces are intense and brilliant, and capture both beauty and horror without losing their sense of compassion. Kahraman holds space for all things in her work, advocates for deeper empathy from her audience, and creates moving pieces we find difficult to take our eyes off of.

Let’s get real. And by real, we mean Real-ism. Today we’re talking about an artist with an unabashed presence in the art world, despite being uprooted by one of the most tumultuous times in European history: it’s painter Lotte Laserstein. Laserstein became one of the first–and few–women artists to attend the Berlin Academy of Fine Arts, studying between 1919 and 1925. However, it’s worth noting that women in the arts was nothing new to Laserstein who initially received her training in Berlin at an art school run by her aunt before her years at the Academy. Laserstein painted in the Realist style and rocked her first solo exhibition in Berlin in 1930. Tragically, the rise of Nazisim in Germany pushed Laserstein out of the country as her grandfather was Jewish and her mother's home was eventually confiscated by the state. Uprooted, she moved to Stockholm where she continued her artistry for the rest of her life. Her Self Portrait with a Cat (1928) challenged the art world’s ideas of women artists, as Laserstein portrays herself looking directly at the viewer, holding her pet cat, and wearing more “unconventional” attire for women of the time. The directness of the sitter combined with the no-metaphor style of Realist painting makes this piece a statement that real people don’t always fit one mold set for them by society, but are real and present nonetheless. This image stands in contrast to the more demure, traditional depictions of women artists that were more commonly accepted by the art institution at the time. Laserstein painted many other women models and prominent women from the German art scene, and is regarded in history for her “fearless female gaze” in portraits. We just love to see it.

Here on WAW we love a good redemption story, and this week we’re sharing one for the books! The Paris Picasso Museum will host an exhibit dedicated to the work of Françoise Gilot, a French painter and the former partner of our much-despised art historical nemesis, Pablo Picasso, who notably depicted Gilot and other sitters in ways openly criticized for blatant misogyny today. Before we get into all the implications of her relationship status, let’s talk a little about the woman behind the artwork first and foremost. Gilot was born in a suburb of Paris in 1921. Her parents encouraged her to study law, while her grandmother inspired her to take up painting. Gilot’s modern paintings showcase an individual style sporting geometric shapes and colors. Her work expresses an abundance of color, energy, and joy.

The exuberance of Gilot’s work is also present in a self-portrait which she debuted in her first solo show in Paris in 1952. The piece stood in blatant contrast to images Picasso created of Gilot, which almost exclusively depict her as expressionless and lacking any visible personality.
Gilot’s piece speaks for itself and identifies her as an individual outside of the image cast by her lover. In 2021, her painting Paloma à la Guitare (1965) sold for $1.3 million at a Sotheby's auction. Which was the first time Gilot had seen this painting since she completed it.

The Paris Picasso Museum houses a substantial amount of Gilot’s work in their permanent collection, though it has never been shown. The new exhibit will feature several decades of Gilot’s artistic career, including a deep-dive into the 1964 memoir, Life with Picasso, that Gilot published despite Picasso’s attempt to squash the project. (Believe it or not, the facts of Picasso’s life, work, and attitudes paint a pretty icky picture… who knew?) The exhibit comes in the wake of Gilot’s death last year. Gilot died in 2023 at the age of 101 having once promise that she would “outlive all of her enemies”--a promise, it seems, she kept. We love to see a museum (finally) acknowledging the work of a female artist who had her own vibrant career outside of the role of muse.

Go big or go… away from WAW today. 😜 Today we’re taking things to a biiiiig scale with a talented and disruptive sculpture artist from the 1960s, Niki de Saint Phalle!
Niki de Saint Phalle is known historically for her monumental sculptures, making her one of the few women in history to achieve sculpture on such a massive scale. Self-taught and rebellious from the beginning, Saint Phalle made waves in the 1960s Parisian art scene with stunts like shooting at her own paintings with a RIFLE to burst bags dripping with color. (Kind of like a hyper-intense version of that beloved scene from the Princess Diaries… iykyk). “I was shooting at myself, society with its injustices,” the artist later explained, “I was shooting at my own violence and the violence of the times.”
Saint Phalle eventually got into the sculpture game, where she challenged the boundaries of that medium by experimenting with architectural projects, sculpture gardens, theater sets, figurative homes, parks, and playgrounds. Her sculptural installation Tarot Garden, has been publically available since 1998 in Rome for visitors to admire, experience, and play within. Saint Phalle prioritized activism, fighting for women’s rights and HIV/AIDS awareness. In this effort, she illustrated a book titled Aids: You Can’t Catch It Holding Hands (1986). Saint Phalle’s body of work exhibits two core themes: feminist rage and celebration of womanhood. Her pieces depict dreamy, almost fantastical feminine bodies in kinetic, dynamic movements that are undeniably joyful. Her skill with the medium and unique style as a self-taught artist is evident in her pieces and the acclaim they gained worldwide during her life and career. Sadly, Saint Phalle died in the early 2000s from health issues possibly linked to toxic chemicals in her art materials. One thing is for sure though, Saint Phalle’s energy, creativity, and boldness created a legacy almost as large as her famous sculptures. ❤️

Some books release mems 🥰 two years later we’re still in awe of all the awesome people who came together to turn this thing into a reality, and of the amazing and talented artists who agreed to be featured!

Today is a very special Women’s Art Wednesday, as it marks TWO YEARS since the release of our book, Women’s Art Wednesday, A Woman Artist For Every Week of the Year.
We wrote this book because so often the intellectual contributions of women have been overlooked in history, and especially the history of important cultural movements. We worked with so many talented artists, designers, writers and historians to bring this thing into existence, and dedicated every page to make learning about these women and their artistic contributions fun and enjoyable. If you haven’t yet, click the link in our bio to check it out, and give this little passion project of ours a read 💕

Hello hello WAW! Today we’re talking textiles and QUILTS with the magnificent Bisa Butler!

Butler is a contemporary textile artist with a flair for vibrance, known for her unique and striking quilted portraits. Butler often references historic photographs or portraits to create her stunning pieces, including her notable portrait of Harriet Tubman. Butler also uses vibrant colors in her work to connect to her African heritage. The impactful quality of Butler’s work has helped reframe institutional perceptions of quilting—a medium sometimes dismissed in the fine art world as a craft or labor rather than an “art”.

Butler doesn’t use a symbolic skin tone in the portraits, but rather incorporates vibrant shimmers of blue, fuchsia, green, and orange to emphasize facial features. Her work is inspired by history, both personal and general. In her practice Butler looks at black-and-white portraits of her relatives and earlier generations of her family and speculates on what they wore and where they lived to help inform her choices of color to bring images to life.

If the concepts and aesthetics of these pieces wasn’t impressive enough, the ex*****on displays a truly mind-boggling level of skill and patience. One portrait can take hundreds of hours to complete, requiring sketches, layering, cutting, pinning, and finally a quilting machine to stitch it all together. 

Butler’s work continues to gain acclaim and saw a solo exhibition at the Art Institute of Chicago, which eventually became a traveling exhibition. Please join us in enjoying the work of this impressive artist and stunning works!

Valentine’s Day has us feeling the pink vibes, and when it comes to pink there is one artist who immediately springs to mind: Portia Munson. Munson, (b.1961) is known for her maximal installations, sculptures, paintings, and digital prints around themes of feminism and environmental and cultural themes. One of her most captivating installations was called “Pink Project: Bedroom,” which was first exhibited at the New Museum’s Bad Girl Exhibition in 1994 and then again at the Museum of S*x in 2023. This room has thousands of pink items that were once discarded, and they all have something in common: they were created to specifically appeal to women and girls. Munson says of her work: “Each iteration of the work has revealed the marketing of femininity and the infantilization of the female gender while also exploring the cultural loaded color pink and its continued social projection onto girls and women.” Munson’s pieces are large, visually overwhelming, and pose the question of how society values and views women as consumers.

Somewhere between expressionism and surrealism lies today’s dreamy WAW feature, Clara Ledesma. Ledesma (1924-1999) was a painter and the first woman to enroll in the National School of Fine Arts in Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic. In 1951 she opened an independent art studio where she displayed Dominican artists of the day. She is known as a pioneer of Afro-Latina artists who displayed work on a global scale. Ledesma eventually moved to New York City—essentially the epicenter of the modern art scene in the 20th century—to open another gallery. This move expanded the reach of her work and further cemented her place in 20th century art history. Her pieces utilized vibrant colors full of mysticism and borrowed elements from Expressionism, Surrealism, and Abstraction, making them a unique reflection of numerous modern art and thought movements. While her figures were often imaginative and her scenes fantastical, she did not shy away from underlining very real racial inequities in her work. Many of her figures depict and celebrate the beauty of Native and Afro-Latina women—something that rarely existed in the euro-centric works of many modern art movements. Ledesma’s pieces are moving, joyful, thoughtful, and provide a unique and refreshing take on modern art styles in their subject and composition. 🧜‍♀️💓