Edith Stanway Halcombe

Edith Halcombe was versatile and capable in the frontier environment, and her promotion of Jersey cattle contributed to the success of New Zealand’s dairy industry. Professional tuition gave her the ability to make a competent record of the changing landscapes in which she lived. Her paintings and drawings are held in public collections in New Zealand and Australia.

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Daisy Frances Christina Osborn

Although ‘Gods’ featured in the 1940 National Centennial Exhibition of New Zealand Art in Wellington, and other work is held in public and numerous private collections, her contribution to Canterbury art was not recognised until she was included in the 1993 exhibition, White Camellias.

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Georgina Burne Hetley

She is remembered as a forceful personality, singleminded in the pursuit of her goal to paint New Zealand’s indigenous flora before it was destroyed by the advance of cultivation.

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Elsie Robinson

Elsie Robinson was a journalist, fiction writer and poet. She was best known for her nationally syndicated column, Listen, World! which was read by more than 20 million Americans between 1921-1956. Robinson used her voice to continuously examine and challenge the status quo, especially when it came to women’s perceived roles in society.

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Paula Rego

Rego is an incredibly important cultural figure in Portugal, considered to be one of the nation’s most famous and influential artists.

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Leonor Fini

Leonor Fini was befriended by the whole Parisian artistic community and was one of the most photographed people of the 20th century, resulting in the legacy of “queen of the Paris art world” (expression coined by art critic Sarah Kent). Her popularity in artistic social circles made her the subject of many poems, artworks, and photographs by various artists and writers of her time.

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Marie Laurencin

Laurencin’s influence can be seen across the work of a number of artists who have employed visual languages of femininity in order to explore the place of women and gender expectations in modern life. Louise Bourgeois, Laurencin’s most celebrated student, similarly used clothing and other symbols of womanhood in order to explore female relationships, using psychoanalytic ideas to consider familial relationships, the human body and emotional states.

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Yayoi Kusama

More important than the impact her diverse work has on the art market is its influence on other artists and movements, which spans generations. To this day, she represents herself as a lone wolf most comfortable with being known as independently avant-garde.

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