International ARTISTS DAY
In honor of International Artists Day here is a look at 10 Feminist artists in Art HERstory.
“International Artists' Day commemorates the importance of art as a creative human expression and as a chronicler of human life, nature, and communities. 25 October marks the celebration of International Artists' Day around the globe to honour artists and their contribution to society.”
Kenojuak Ashevak
One of Canada’s most acclaimed visual artists. Known for her soapstone carving, drawing, etching, stone-cut, sculptures, and printmaking, Ashevak began creating at a young age. Born in an igloo in an Inuit camp, Ikirasaq, at the southern coast of Baffin Island in 1927, Ashevak was the first Inuit woman to begin drawing in Cape Dorset. Married with 11 children, she showed her work all over the country in numerous collections and exhibitions. In 1970 her print, Enchanted Owl was reproduced on a stamp commemorating the centennial of the Northwest Territories, and again in 1993, Canada Post selected her drawing The Owl to be reproduced on their .86 cent stamp. In the spring of 2001, Kenojuak was the first Inuit artist to be inducted into Canada’s Walk of Fame. After a long and successful career, Ashevak passed in 2013.
Augusta Savage
Born in Florida in 1892, is a ground-breaking sculptor who used her art to fight against black stereotypes portrayed in the art world. One of fourteen children, Augusta eventually made her way to New York City where she studied at Cooper Union School of Art. Upon graduation, she began to sculpt busts of W.E.B. Dubois and Frederick Douglas, which began to bring her some notoriety. Her works were some of the more prominent pieces coming out of the Harlem Renaissance, which was a cultural movement celebrating African American culture, art, and literature in the 1920s. After living and exhibiting in Paris for several years, she taught art and helped other Black artists gain funding through the government’s WPA Federal Art Project.
Ana Mendieta
Born in Havana in 1948, Mendieta fled Cuba at the age of 12 and was sent to an orphanage in Iowa. Best known for her “earth-body” performances as she referred to them, Mendieta examined her identity and displacement through photography, film, and sculpture. Relying on her body as her subject, she would make impressions in various sites in nature, archiving her imprints in photographs and videos. She would often fill these silhouettes with flowers, leaves, rocks, and sometimes blood, blending elements of ritual and magic as she said, “to express the immediacy of life and the eternity of nature.” A pioneer in feminist art, she used her art to speak out against rape and domestic violence, critique conventions of beauty, and develop a more inclusive feminist art community. Tragically, Mendieta died at age thirty-six when she fell from her 34th-floor apartment window, her husband, the artist Carl Andre, was acquitted of her murder.
Claude Cahun
“Masculine? Feminine? It depends on the situation. Neuter is the only gender that always suits me.” Born Lucy Schwob, was gender fluid before the term was even mainstream. A photographer, writer, and political activist, Cahun worked collaboratively with long-term lover Marcel Moore. The couple adopted these gender-neutral pseudonyms together, while creatively collaborating to explore issues of identity. They often played with the multiplicity of disguise as a doll, aviator, bodybuilder, and angel using Cahun’s body as the canvas for these dialogues. Devastatingly, many of their works were destroyed after the couple was arrested for their anti-Nazi texts.
Frida Kahlo
Most of the world recognizes the work of renowned artist Frida Kahlo, but some may not know of the physical disabilities she lived with throughout her life. At the age of six, Frida was bedridden with polio causing damage to her right leg and foot, and left with a limp. As a teenager, she was in a severe car accident leaving her spine and pelvis significantly damaged. With this intense recovery period, she began to paint. In the painting “The Broken Column” she depicts herself standing on the beach with her body open showing a rod and restrictive medical corset, which she had to wear for most of her life. Throughout her life, she confronted her disabilities and turned them into art. “I never paint dreams or nightmares. I paint my own reality.” Kahlo is a true inspiration for all of us! Celebrate the disabled artists in your life by tagging them below.
Judy Chicago
As an artist who worked across many mediums, Judy Chicago started creating land art in the late 1960s in her first series titled “Atmospheres.” Using smoke in various landscapes, she wanted to soften and “feminize the environment” at least briefly. In her later performances, she worked with other women painting their nude bodies purple, orange, and green alongside smoke clouds of similar colors, all against the incredible desert backdrop. Resembling goddesses, the performances became a kind of ritualistic practice in honoring Mother Earth. To go see what Judy Chicago is currently working on, check her out @judy.Chicago.
Niki de Saint Phalle
Born in 1930, was a French-American sculptor, painter, filmmaker, and author of hand-illustrated books. She first received worldwide attention for her assemblage paintings that were created with a firearm containing paint that she would shoot onto the canvas. Later she developed her monumental sculptures “Nanas” which were whimsical and colorful large-scale sculptures of animals and female figures. With no formal training in art, her experimental and child-like curiosity became the lens through which she saw the world. If you happen to be in NYC, you can visit her first major US exhibition, Niki de Saint Phalle: Structures for Life at @momaps1 “which features over 200 works that highlight her interdisciplinary approach and engagement with pressing social issues. Innovation was key to Saint Phalle’s process: from beginning to end, she envisioned new ways of inhabiting the world.”
Howardena Pindell
Born in 1943 in Philadelphia, is an American artist, curator, and educator. After graduating with a degree in Painting from Boston and Yale Universities, she accepted a job in the Department of Prints and Illustrated Books at MoMA where she worked for twelve years. Producing over hundreds of paintings, she explores texture, color, and the process of making art through destruction and reconstruction. Using her work as a catalyst for her political voice, she addresses issues of racism, feminism, violence, and exploitation. She currently works as a full tenured professor at the State University of New York, Stony Brook, while continuing to exhibit around the world.
Helen Frankenthaler
Born in 1928 in New York City, is known as one of the most influential artists of the 21st century. A career that spanned over six decades, Frankenthaler was an abstract expressionist painter amidst an art world that was dominated by men at the time. Finding success with her first major painting at age 23, her style was described as the “bridge between Pollack and what’s possible.” Later on, she began to experiment with using one color in a single stain or blot, contributing largely to the movement of Color field painting. Despite her success, Frankenthaler wasn’t given a big exhibition until 20 years later in 1960 at the Jewish Museum of Art. Passing in 2011, she is now collected by major museum institutions around the world and has become a household name in the abstract art world.
Yoko Ono
Yoko Ono is a Japanese multi-media artist who blurs all lines between singing, poetry, songwriting, and activism. Ono grew up in Tokyo and moved to New York in 1953 where she enrolled at Sarah Lawrence College meeting artists, poets, and bohemians of the downtown city scene. She met and married John Lennon in 1969 who she collaborated with in performances and music until his death in 1980. Ono is a pioneer for conceptual and performance art with Cut Piece , where she invited members of the audience to come and cut pieces of her clothing off on stage. Her book, Grapefruit, published in 1964 is a set of instructions for anyone to perform in their own homes or enact publicly in groups. Ono is currently eighty-eight and stil an avid peace and human rights activist.
Discover more Feminist Artists in #ArtHERstory and current day trailblazing artists on @art.feminist
