page_title: Women artists
section_title: Multi-Media
hierarchical_section_title: Women artists / 20th century / Multi-Media
caption_attribution_description: Space of Unknown Growth by Magdalena Abakanowicz in Open Air Museum of the Centre of Europe. Image for Wikipedia provided by Open Air Museum of the Centre of Europe, 2006. 800x536 pixels. True Color (24 bit). 1286400 Bytes. Polski: Przestrzeń nieznanego rozwoju. Autor: Magdalena Abakanowicz, 1997-1998, 22 cementowe lub betonowe formy różnej wielkości. Centrum Rzeźby Europos Parkas pod Wilnem, Litwa.
context_page_description: Although women artists have been involved in the making of art throughout history, their work, when compared to that of their male counterparts, has been often obfuscated, overlooked and undervalued. Many of their works have been wrongly attributed to men artists. Prevailing stereotypes about the sexes have caused certain media, such as textile or fiber arts, to be primarily associated with women, despite having once been categories, such as ceramic art, in which both men and women participated. Additionally, art forms that have gained this distinction are, as in the case of both textile and fabric arts, demoted to categories like "arts and crafts", rather than fine art.
  Women in art have been faced with challenges due to gender biases in the mainstream fine art world. They have often encountered difficulties in training, travelling and trading their work, as well as gaining recognition. Beginning in the late 1960s and 1970s, feminist artists and art historians created a Feminist art movement that overtly addresses the role of women especially in the Western art world, how world art is perceived, evaluated or appropriated according to gender.
context_section_description: Mary Carroll Nelson founded the Society of Layerists in Multi-Media (SLMM), whose artist members follow in the tradition of Emil Bisttram and the Transcendental Painting Group, as well as Morris Graves of the Pacific Northwest Visionary Art School. In the 1970s, Judy Chicago created The Dinner Party, a very important work of feminist art. Helen Frankenthaler was an Abstract Expressionist painter and she was influenced by Jackson Pollock. Lee Krasner was also an Abstract Expressionist artist and married to Pollock and a student of Hans Hofmann. Elaine de Kooning was a student and later the wife of Willem de Kooning, she was an abstract figurative painter. Anne Ryan was a collagist. Jane Frank, also a student of Hans Hofmann, worked with mixed media on canvas. In Canada, Marcelle Ferron was an exponent of automatism.
  From the 1960s on, feminism led to a great increase in interest in women artists and their academic study. Notable contributions have been made by the art historians Germaine Greer, Linda Nochlin, Griselda Pollock, curator Jasia Reichardt and others. Some art historians such as Daphne Haldin have attempted to redress the balance of male-focused histories by compiling lists of women artists, though many of these efforts remain unpublished. Figures like Artemisia Gentileschi and Frida Kahlo emerged from relative obscurity to become feminist icons. The Guerilla Girls, an anonymous group of females formed in 1985, were "the conscience of the art world." They spoke out about indifference and inequalities for gender and race, particularly in the art world. The Guerilla Girls have made many posters as a way of bringing attention, typically in a humorous way, to the community to raise awareness and create change. In 1996, Catherine de Zegher curated an exhibition of 37 great women artists from the twentieth century. The exhibition, Inside the Visible, that travelled from the ICA in Boston to the National Museum for Women in the Arts in Washington, the Whitechapel in London and the Art Gallery of Western Australia in Perth, included artists' works from the 1930s through the 1990s featuring Claude Cahun, Louise Bourgeois, Bracha Ettinger, Agnes Martin, Carrie Mae Weems, Charlotte Salomon, Eva Hesse, Nancy Spero, Francesca Woodman, Lygia Clark, Mona Hatoum and the acclaimed Magdalena Abakanowicz who used textiles in her installations, among others.
caption: Magdalena Abakanowicz Europos parkas, Lithuania
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