Marlene Dumas

Marlene Dumas is considered one of the most influential and iconic artists of the 21st century. She is largely known for her intimate yet estranged figurative portraits that explore the complexities of identity, followed by her politically charged social art, based on personal photographs, snapshots, or images from the press and the mass media.

Continue reading

Dorothea Tanning

Tanning’s entire oeuvre – from painting to poetry – has had a profound influence on subsequent generations of artists. Her continued exploration of the female form has led to her association with the Feminist movement.

Continue reading

Nancy Graves

Her work stands for an important moment in modern art when the dominant Pop Art trend was challenged, and instead audiences were encouraged to think about natural history, the world around us, and our modern data-based understanding of it. Graves was ahead of her time in her understanding of the importance of democratic data, she has influenced many artists living in the current digital age, such as the map-inspired artist Julie Mehretu, and Frank Stella, Judy Pfaff, Jessica Stockholder, and Sarah Sze.

Continue reading

Paula Rego

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

Continue reading

Lyubov Popova

Popova’s intense but short career inspired many other Soviet artists of the era. She shaped the development of Russian Revolutionary art through her education, travels, and relationships with other artists and influencers. She is particularly renowned as one of the most influential female artists of the 20th century and noted for her collaboration with other women artists including Nadezhda Udaltsova, Aleksandra Ekster, and Varvara Stepanova. Together they demonstrated the new role women could take as workers following the Revolution.

Continue reading

Leonora Carrington

Carrington played a significant role in the internationalization of Surrealism in the years following World War II, and she was a conduit of Surrealist theory in her personal letters and writings throughout her life, extending this tradition into the 21st century.

Continue reading

Niki De Saint Phalle

The Nouveau Realisme movement, and Niki de Saint Phalle’s work in particular, had a significant effect on the development of conceptual art. Her works often combined performance and plastic art in new ways, blending and dismantling hierarchies between painting, sculpture, and performance in a way that would influence conceptual artists.

Continue reading

Itell Colquhoun

Part of Colquhoun’s legacy in the art world lies in her use of automatism. While she did not invent many of the styles (she did invent some), she became a leader in all of these using many different approaches.

Continue reading

Jeanne-Claude Denat de Guillebon

Christo and Jeanne-Claude’s outdoor works are regarded as some of the most ambitious and innovative in the world, though they are oftentimes controversial due to their size and questionable impact on the environment.

Continue reading

Susan Rothenberg

Susan Rothenberg’s legacy would have no doubt been secured with her Horse paintings of the late 1970s, but her successive decades of work only solidified her reputation as a painter of immense verve, depth of feeling, and simultaneously meticulous and spontaneous technique.

Continue reading