March is Youth Art Month and Women's History Month!
As part of Women's History Month, museums, artists and art enthusiasts participate in the challenge:
Can you name #5 Women Artists? This movement is a response to have equal representation of women artists, and women artists of color. In Janson's Basic History of Western Art, a widely used art history textbook, of the 300 artists listed in the book, only EIGHT percent are women, and less than 1% are women of color.
Here is my list of 5 women artists:
As part of Women's History Month, museums, artists and art enthusiasts participate in the challenge:
Can you name #5 Women Artists? This movement is a response to have equal representation of women artists, and women artists of color. In Janson's Basic History of Western Art, a widely used art history textbook, of the 300 artists listed in the book, only EIGHT percent are women, and less than 1% are women of color.
Here is my list of 5 women artists:
Amy Sherald
http://www.amysherald.com
Amy Sherald is a contemporary American portrait painter, who lives and works in Baltimore, MD. Her striking portraits of African-Americans, painted with a signature grayscale skin tones against vibrant backgrounds, highlight the beauty and diversity of black people. Amy’s portraits call into question the way in which identities such as race, class, and gender have been ignored, undervalued, and often lumped together in the history of Western art.
Her portrait of former first lady Michelle Obama hangs in the Smithsonian's National Portrait Gallery.
http://www.amysherald.com
Amy Sherald is a contemporary American portrait painter, who lives and works in Baltimore, MD. Her striking portraits of African-Americans, painted with a signature grayscale skin tones against vibrant backgrounds, highlight the beauty and diversity of black people. Amy’s portraits call into question the way in which identities such as race, class, and gender have been ignored, undervalued, and often lumped together in the history of Western art.
Her portrait of former first lady Michelle Obama hangs in the Smithsonian's National Portrait Gallery.
Francesca Woodman
was an American photographer known for her black and white portraits. Her work featured recurring symbols of birds and mirrors and almost always had soft focus and slow shutter showing movement in her long exposure photographs. Usually her face is obscured and we see the relationship between the figure and the surroundings. Sadly, she committed suicide at age 22. Her work has been exhibited posthumously at the SF Museum of Art, the Guggenheim in New York and in many other galleries worldwide.
Lola Alvarez Bravo was one of Mexico’s most important photographers. Like other women artists linked with famous male counterparts, her work has often been overshadowed by that of her husband, renowned photographer Manuel Alvarez Bravo.
Lola moved amongst the people along cluttered streets, observing them at work, in the marketplace, and at leisure, waiting for opportunities to capture informal moments in carefully composed scenes. Her keen eye produced stirring and expressive images of Mexican life with a contemporary sensibility that places her among the renowned photographic interpreters of that country in the modern period: Edward Weston, Paul Strand, Tina Modotti, and Manual Alvarez Bravo. During her long career, Lola Alvarez Bravo worked as a photojournalist, commercial photographer, professional portraitist, political artist, teacher, and gallery curator.
https://ccp.arizona.edu/artists/lola-alvarez-bravo
Yayoi Kusama (born 1929) is a Japanese artist who works in sculpture, painting and installation. A trademark of her work is polka dots, or "infinity nets" that were taken from hallucinations she had starting as a child. She lived and worked in Seattle and New York and is well known for her Mirror/Infinity rooms. These complex installations were lined with mirrored glass and neon-colored balls, hanging at various heights above the viewer. Standing inside on a small platform, an observer sees light repeatedly reflected off the mirrored surfaces to create the illusion of a never-ending space.
In 1973, Kusama returned to Japan. Two years later, seeking treatment for her obsessive-compulsive neurosis, she entered the Seiwa Hospital for the Mentally Ill, where she lives and works to this day. She continues to produce paintings and sculpture, and, in the 1980s, added poetry and fiction to her range of creative pursuits.
Lorna Simpson
Lorna Simpson is an American artist, born in 1960, who lives and works in New York. She uses photography, video and collage to explore identity – which means what makes us who we are – using her own experiences as a black woman to inspire her work. She is most well known for her powerful artworks that combine photographs with words. In these works she questions and challenges narrow and conventional ideas about women, culture and race. Because she uses photography to explore ideas rather than just taking photos of things she sees around her, she is sometimes described as a conceptual photographer. Lorna Simpson became well known in the 1980s for exploring themes and ideas relating to identity politics in their work. Identity politics focuses on the lives and experience of those who are often marginalised in society such as black people, women and gay people. Identity politics aims to make others aware of the issues and unfairness that these marginalised people have to face.
http://www.tate.org.uk/kids/explore/who-is/who-lorna-simpson
https://www.phototraces.com/creative-photography/famous-female-photographers/
More favorites: Cig Harvey, Louise Nevelson, Louise Bourgeois, Cornelia Parker, Tara Donovan, Anna Atkins, Kara Walker, Barbara Kruger, Frida Kahlo, Cindy Sherman, Niki de St. Phalle, Judy Chicago, Jenny Holzer, Georgia O'Keefe, Mary Cassatt, Barbara Hepworth, Berthe Morisot, Ann Hamilton, Bernice Abbott, Corita Kent, Rachel Whiteread, Diane Arbus, Marina Abramovic, Maya Lin, Lalla Essaydi, Helen Frankenthaler, Grace Hartigan, Carrie Mae Weems, Annie Leibovitz, Hannah Hoch....