Top 10 Famous Women Artists That You Should Know In 2023

Famous Women Artists

Did you know that there are many famous women artists out there? In fact, some of the most famous painters, sculptors, and photographers in history were women. If you’re interested in learning more about these talented artists, or if you’re simply looking for some inspiration, then this blog post is for you.

Women have been creating art since the dawn of time. Yet, for much of history, their work has been largely unrecognized or attributed to male artists. In recent years, however, there has been a renewed interest in the work of Famous Women Artists worldwide. Here are just a few of the many talented women who are making their mark on the art world today.

Frida Kahlo, a Mexican artist, is best known for her vibrant and incredibly intimate self-portraits. Kahlo’s work often includes elements of Mexican folk art and addresses themes of gender, identity, and disability. Iranian-born American artist Shirin Neshat is celebrated for her powerful portraits of Iranian women living under Islamic rule. These are just a few of the many incredible Famous Women Artists working today who are helping to shape the future of the art world.

Top 10 Female Artists That You Should Know

Here we’ll take a look at the lives and work of some of the most distinguished female artists in history. So dive in, and be inspired.

1. Élisabeth Louise Vigée Le Brun (French, 1755–1842)

Élisabeth Louise Vigée Le Brun was entirely self-taught and was working during some of the most violent periods in European history. She overcame considerable obstacles to become an artist despite them (as with any woman in late 18th-century Paris).

She was one of only four female members of the French Academy at the age of 28, thanks to Marie Antoinette’s influence. Vigée Le Brun was especially praised for her empathetic portrayals of aristocratic women, who were praised for being more true to life than those of her contemporaries.

The artist, who had to flee Paris during the Revolution, traveled through Europe and took jobs in Florence, Naples, Vienna, Saint Petersburg, and Berlin before eventually making his way back to France once the fighting subsided.

2. Mary Cassatt (American, 1844–1926)

One of three female artists and the only American officially associated with Impressionism was Mary Cassatt. She served as a trusted advisor and helped introduce European art to influential American collectors.

Cassatt was certain that art must depict contemporary life. In the Loge, the artist’s first Impressionist painting shown in the country, was completed in 1878 and depicts her as a contemporary woman with skill. 

Many male artists portrayed women as objects of display in theatrical boxes, but Cassatt’s female lead performs a dynamic role involved in the act of looking. 

However, the male gaze rules as a gray-haired theatre patron in the distance directs his own binoculars at her. We complete the circle like the spectator.

3. Hilma af Klint (Swedish, 1862-1944)

Even though Hilma Af Klint completed her first abstract compositions years before Wassily Kandinsky, Kazimir Malevich, and Piet Mondrian, she wasn’t widely recognized as a great abstract art pioneer until the Guggenheim Museum mounted a sizable exhibition of her work.

“Hilma af Klint: Paintings for the Future,” which was on display from October 2018 to April 2019, includes a variety of large, vivid, and vaguely magical-appearing abstract paintings, and it is still the most popular Guggenheim show to date.

Stockholm-born af Klint studied at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts there, graduating in 1887. She later rose to recognition for her figurative paintings and served as the association of Swedish Women Artists’ secretary.

As individuals, especially if Klint, searching for a method to reconcile religion with the numerous recent scientific breakthroughs, spiritualism and Theosophy gained popularity during this period. 

Her initial significant body of nonfigurative, nonobjective work was inspired by these worldview systems. Between 1906 and 1915, the 193 works collectively referred to as The Paintings for the Temple explored a dualistic conception of the cosmos, creation, and evolution.

Af Klint stipulated that the pieces couldn’t be displayed until 20 years after her passing because they were meant to be set in a spiral temple. The majority of the display at the Guggenheim—a circular sanctuary unto itself—was made up of those paintings as well as a few of her earlier works.

4. Georgia O’Keeffe (American, 1887-1986)

Georgia O’Keeffe, a key player in American Modernism, was one of the first American artists to create a wholly abstract work of art in 1915, in opposition to the prevalent American realism trend. 

In Music, Pink and Blue from 1918, O’Keefe abstracts a floral subject through extreme cropping, producing an archway of vibrant petals that hum with the musical intensity alluding to in the title.

O’Keeffe was somewhat inspired by the theories of Russian artist Wassily Kandinsky to investigate “the idea that music could be converted into something for the eye” in order to achieve pure expression free of all external references.

5. Augusta Savage (American, 1892-1962)

A pioneering artist associated with the Harlem Renaissance, Augusta Savage also made a significant contribution to education and activism in support of equal rights for African-Americans in the arts.

Born close to Jacksonville, Florida, Savage traveled to New York City in 1921 to attend Cooper Union to study art, beating out 142 men for a position in the school. 

Savage applied in 1923 for a French government-sponsored summer painting program but was ultimately turned down because to her race. 

At this point, she started fighting for the democratization and equality of the arts. A bust of W. E. B. Du Bois, one of her first commissions, garnered favorable reviews.

Savage continued to carve other African-American figures, including Marcus Garvey and William Pickens Sr., after carving DuBois for the Harlem Library.

As a result of the tremendous acclaim her sculpture of a Harlem kid, Gamin, received in 1929, she was given a scholarship to study at the Academie de la Grande Chaumiere in Paris, where she showed her work and received various honors. 

After his return to the country in 1931, Savage founded the Savage Studio of Arts and Crafts, which later changed its name to the Harlem Community Art Center.

Two years later, she became the first African-American artist to be elected to the National Association of Women Painters and Sculptors.

The artist dedicated the rest of her life to teaching people about the arts while also creating innovative works of art (she was one of four women to receive a commission from the 1939 World’s Fair).

6. Frida Kahlo (Mexican, 1907-1954)

André Breton, the father of Surrealism, famously referred to Frida Kahlo’s violent self-portraits, which feature her recognizable prominent unibrow and mustache, as “ribbon[s] around a bomb.” Kahlo’s artwork is, in fact, both alluring and combative. 

Frida Kahlo created “The Two Fridas (Las dos Fridas)” in 1939, shortly after divorcing Mexican muralist Diego Rivera, in which she depicts her two personalities: one in traditional Tehuana clothes with a broken heart and the other in modern attire, independent, and with a full heart.

Identity politics owe a lot to Kahlo’s ongoing remaking and layering of her own identity, which still influences artists today.

7. Louise Bourgeois (French, 1911-2010)

Louise Bourgeois, a native of Paris whose parents had a tapestry repair business, worked in the workshop with them during her formative years, filling in the blanks in the designs that were depicted on the tapestries. 

She studied in geometry and mathematics at the Sorbonne but eventually returned to her first love, art, working in printmaking, painting, and large-scale sculpture over the course of her extensive and varied career. 

She didn’t formally belong to any one particular creative movement, but she displayed alongside the abstract expressionists and her work tackled issues like sexuality, the unconscious, and loneliness. 

When Louise Bourgeois was 70 years old, the Museum of Modern Art showed a retrospective of her work that included twisted human-like forms. This was the Bourgeois’ time to shine.

8. Agnes Martin (Canadian, 1912-2004)

Agnes Martin, who is sometimes linked to the minimalist style, was in a class by herself and defies simple classification. 

Martin, who described herself as being quite quiet and spiritual, revealed that she would transform her paintings, which were the size of postage stamps, that she received fully created, onto large-scale canvases. 

Friendship, a shimmering gold icon from 1963, is a wonderful illustration of the artist’s groundbreaking grid paintings. 

Martin creates a limitless field with a mysterious quality, which is the physical manifestation of sublime peace, using delicately incised lines that appear faultless but are actually imbued with the sense of the human hand upon closer scrutiny. 

A Martin work retrospective makes its New York Guggenheim debut in October 2016.

9. Leonora Carrington (British-Mexican, 1917-2011)

Leonora Carrington was a British-born author and artist well-known for her surrealist works. Before transferring to the Ozenfant Academy of Fine Arts in London in 1936, she originally studied painting at the Chelsea School of Art. 

She visited the International Surrealist Exhibition the same year and was fascinated to German painter Max Ernst’s work. 

The two began dating after they ran into each other at a party the next year, and they lived together in Paris until the start of World War II, when Ernst was detained by the police and had to leave his home country to avoid persecution. 

With Peggy Guggenheim’s assistance, whom he eventually married, he managed to flee to the United States.

Carrington was hospitalized for a mental breakdown and given strong medication not long after the two had broken up. 

She escaped to Mexico after being freed, where she was greatly influenced by the local mythology, which played a significant role in her art. Her extremely autobiographical paintings, which portray bizarre animals and eerie settings, make allusions to magic, metamorphosis, and the occult. 

She was involved in the Women’s Liberation Movement in the 1970s and created a poster called Mujeres Conciencia for the movement in 1973. At the Women’s Caucus for Art convention in New York, she was given the Lifetime Achievement Award in 1986 for her commitment to her political work.

10 Elaine Sturtevant (American, 1924-2014)

Elaine Sturtevant created what initially appears to be a painting by Andy Warhol or Jasper Johns, faithfully copying the forms and techniques of the original to a concerning degree.

In order to attack the institutions of art and society as well as the hierarchies of gender, originality, and authorship, Sturtevant has hijacked the works of her male colleagues ever since 1964.

Even better, Warhol agreed to let Sturtevant use his screen-maker to make the exact Marilyn screen he had used in his own work. Sturtevant claims that when people enquired about the specifics of Warhol’s creative process, he would advise them to “ask Elaine.”

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Conclusion

These ten artists are an excellent starting point for exploring the vast and varied world of Famous Women Artists. There are many more talented women out there waiting to be discovered, so don’t stop here! Be sure to explore other genres and mediums, and keep your eyes open for new and upcoming artists.

We hope that this article has helped you to know famous women artists. If you have any questions then let us know in the comment section. Thanks for reading.