"although she probably wielded the brush in many of the late, great works attributed to him, full recognition still eludes her."
Terrific piece from @kmgovier 👇
Katsushika Oi: The hidden hand behind Hokusai engelsbergideas.com/portraits/ka...
“At a certain point, I realized I would be either a criminal or an artist. . . . I understood I was not good at following rules.”
Martha Rosler
#womenartists
Virginia Woolf, more than a hundred years ago:
The eclectic collection spans hundreds of years and includes ceramics, textiles and photographs, as well as documents from Rivera and Kahlo’s personal archives.
buff.ly/4M2tJQs
Agnes Pelton, Departure, 1952
#womenartists
!!!!
Noah's Ark, Turkish Miniature from the early 20th century
Painted in 1922, this work comes from an important early moment in Guatemalan artist Carlos Mérida’s career, when he was shaping a modern visual language that drew on both European avant-garde simplification and the Indigenous and popular cultures of Guatemala and Mexico. Rather than painting anecdotal action or social drama, he makes a pair of women feel timeless and iconic. Two women stand close together against a vivid green background, filling almost the whole painting. The woman at left faces forward, her expression calm and steady, with almond-shaped eyes, long dark braids, and a black rebozo striped with soft pink lines draped over her shoulders and arm. A wedge of a white shirt and a blue skirt appear beneath it. The woman at right turns in profile toward her companion. Her black hair is center-parted and braided, and she wears a round earring and a pink patterned garment banded with blue and gold-like dots. Their skin is rendered in warm brown tones with their features simplified into clear outlines and smooth planes. Tiny houses perch on distant hill made from thin, curving lines, giving the scene a dreamlike sense of place rather than a fully described landscape. The sitters are not identified, but Mérida presents them with dignity, gravity, and quiet monumentality. Their stillness, flattened forms, and patterned textiles turn everyday dress into structure, rhythm, and design. Metepec names a real place, yet the painting resists mere ethnographic description. It becomes something more lyrical and distilled. The small houses behind them hint at village life, but the figures dominate the picture with a sculptural calm that suggests presence, memory, and cultural continuity. Mérida spent much of his life in Mexico and was especially admired for bringing modernist abstraction into conversation Indigenous and Latin American sources. Here, that synthesis is tender rather than loud as two women become carriers of beauty, place, and identity.
“Mujeres de Metepec” (Women of Metepec) by Carlos Mérida (Guatemalan) - Oil on canvas / 1922 - Museum of Fine Arts, Houston (Texas) #WomenInArt #CarlosMerida #CarlosMérida #Mérida #Merida #MuseumofFineArtsHouston #MFAH #LatinAmericanArt #art #artText #GuatemalanArt #GuatemalanArtist #arte #1920sArt
News from the garden
#EvaGonzalès was #BOTD in 1849. A student of Manet's, she exhibited with the #Impressionists. Here is Secretly, from 1878. The young woman who is supposed to be practicing the piano is sneaking a read--maybe Flaubert's recent short story collection or his earlier Madame Bovary?
Mark yer calendars: I'm going to be chit chatting with fellow art scribe Megan O'Grady following a screening of Agnès Varda's "Vagabond" on May 9th!
dice.fm/event/l8d2rp...
'Vermeer’, by Wisława Szymborska
So long as that woman from the Rijksmuseum
in painted quiet and concentration
keeps pouring milk day after day
from the pitcher to the bowl
the World hasn’t earned
the world’s end.
#womeninSTEM 💪😀
Eva Frankfurther, a Jewish refugee who fled Nazi Germany as a child and later lived in Britain, often painted people who labored in the everyday public life of post-World War II London. Around this time, she worked at Lyons Corner House, and the museum identifies these uniforms as Lyons uniforms, tying this painting to the restaurant world the artist knew firsthand. Two Caribbean women in white waitress uniforms sit or lean closely together at a café counter. Their crisp crossover bodices and curved white caps mark them as workers, but Frankfurther gives far more attention to their faces, posture, and shared presence than to the setting. The woman at left, with medium-brown skin and softly waved dark hair, turns toward her coworker with lowered eyes and a tired expression. Her forearm stretches across the counter toward a small glass containing an amber drink. The woman at right, with deeper brown skin, looks in profile toward her companion as a small earring catches the light near her ear. Her hand holds a plain grey plate in the foreground. The background is a warm pink-beige wash, spare and quiet, so the women’s bodies, uniforms, and exchanged attention become the painting’s center of gravity. The mood is intimate, hushed, and observant. Rather than treating the women as anonymous staff, she gives the unidentified women individuality, closeness, and emotional depth. Their mirrored arrangement suggests solidarity, but the painting does not sentimentalize service work so that fatigue, patience, and mutual recognition remain visible. In 1950s Britain, Caribbean migrants were reshaping the nation’s social and cultural life, often while facing racism and exclusion. Frankfurther’s painting quietly insists that these women belong at the center of modern British history. What might seem at first like a modest workplace scene becomes a portrait of dignity, migration, and human connection.
“West Indian Waitresses” by Eva Frankfurther (German-born British) - Oil on paper / c. 1955 - Ben Uri Gallery & Museum (London, England) #WomenInArt #WomensArt #EvaFrankfurther #Frankfurther #BenUriMuseum #BenUri #WomenPaintingWomen #waitress #art #artText #arte #1950sArt #WomanArtist #WomenArtists
I heard it in the video! Anyway... those eyes speak for themselves 👀
2/2 Filippino Lippi, looking right at you from edge of his own painting in Brancacci Chapel, Florence. Today is his day.
Been hearing about Michelina Wautier a bit, and curious?
A wonderful video on a great ##womanartist from @smarthistory.bsky.social
youtu.be/0rPUuzmtw9o?...
Oil painting portrait of seated young Rubens and his wife Isabella outdoors looking quite content and relaxed. Peter Paul Rubens, Rubens and Isabella Brant in the Honeysuckle Bower, c. 1609–10, oil on canvas, 178 x 136.5 cm (Alte Pinakothek, Munich).
Hey @peterpaulrubens.bsky.social, we're fans! Smarthistory has a number of essays and videos on paintings by the 17th c. artist and diplomat
smarthistory.org/peter-paul-r...
.... and if you're looking for an accessible, open-access thing for intro-level teaching, I have a piece in @smarthistory.bsky.social:
smarthistory.org/ole-worm-mus...
Lavinia Fontana, Self-Portrait at the Spinet
by Letha Ch'ien for @smarthistory.bsky.social
smarthistory.org/lavinia-font...
Using @smarthistory.bsky.social resources to enhance contextual teaching of ancient artifacts in my ARTH 100 courses
smarthistory.org/warka-vase/?...
As always, thanks for sharing wonder and joy 😊
How fabulous! Wasn't expecting a visitor from ancient Sumeria. What a great way to start the day. Watch this video from @smarthistory.bsky.social and you'll be smiling.
(He's adorable!)
😀👌
You can't help it - you guys are brilliant !
👏 👏👏
Always interested,
@smarthistory.bsky.social
!
