By Emily Burkhart September 26, 2024 Anna Boch (1848-1936),  En Juin (In June), 1894. Oil on canvas, dimensions unavailable. Musée des Beaux-Arts, Charleroi, Belgium. Image courtesy of Art Errors. Considered a grand dame of the Belgian art scene , the Neo-Impressionist artist Anna Boch (1848-1936) was both a painter and accomplished musician as well as a passionate art collector with a shrewd knack for promoting talented and struggling artists, many of whom were personal friends. Her large collection of paintings included works by Paul Gauguin (1848-1903), Paul Signac (1863-1935), and James Ensor (1860-1949), among others. Notably, she purchased a painting by Vincent van Gogh (1853-1890), La Vigne Rouge (The Red Vineyard at Montmajour,   1888), that was believed to be the only painting Van Gogh ever sold in his lifetime . It is estimated that Boch completed more than 900 of her own paintings over her career as well. She was a woman of rare independence for her time. She never married nor had children; instead, she devoted her life to art, music, and travel. She was the first and only female member of the Belgian artistic group  Les XX  ( Les Vingt,  The Twenty, 1883-1893) and became one of the few female artists to achieve acclaim as a Pointillist . Today, Anna Boch has the distinction of being the most important woman artist of her time in Belgium. Vincent Everarts, Portrait photo of Anna Boch at easel,  nd. Private collection, Binche, Belgium. Image courtesy of De Witte Raaf. Background and Education Anna-Rosalie Boch, known as Anna Boch, was born on February 10, 1848, in Saint-Vaast, Hainaut, Belgium, into a family devoted to music and the visual arts who had been in the ceramics business since 1748. Her father, Frédéric Victor Boch, was the co-founder of the faience porcelain (glazed earthenware) factory, Boch Fréres-Kéramis, in La Louvières, Belgium, while her uncle, Eugene von Boch, co-founded the Villeroy & Boch ceramics factory in Mettlach, Germany. Anna received musical and artistic training from a young age, twin passions she would pursue throughout her lifetime as she became an accomplished pianist, organist, and violinist as well as an artist and art collector. Her younger brother, Eugéne (1855-1941), who also became an established painter and art collector in his own right, befriended Van Gogh who would paint a striking portrait of him in 1888. In 1876, Anna met the well-known landscape, portrait, and still-life painter Isidore Verheyden (1846-1905), who would become her mentor and painting teacher for many years, until she dismissed him as being “too bourgeois and academic.”   Les XX  (1883-1893) and La Libre Esthétique (1894-1914) Anna and Eugéne’s cousin, Octave Maus (1856-1919), an art critic, writer, and lawyer active in the Belgian art scene, helped found and was elected secretary of Les XX (The Twenty) in 1884, a group of twenty Belgian painters, designers, and sculptors. Anna became its only female member in 1885. That same year, she exhibited at the Salon des Indépendants in Paris, France. Les XX  held annual art exhibitions inviting international Impressionist and Neo-Impressionist artists to participate including Camille Pisarro (1830-1903), Claude Monet (1840-1926), Georges Seurat (1859-1891), Paul Gauguin (1848-1903), Paul Cézanne (1839-1906) and, posthumously, Van Gogh in 1890 and 1891. While in Les XX , Boch met the Neo-Impressionist Théophile “Théo” van Rysselberghe (1862-1926), who would become an artistic influence and paint a thoughtful portrait of her in the Pointillist style. After the dissolution of Les XX in 1893, Maus founded its successor,  La Libre Esthétique (The Free Aesthetics) of which Boch was also a member. She regularly participated in its salon exhibitions from 1894 until its last in 1914 at the outbreak of World War I. She had also joined with the painter Emile Claus (1849-1924), a leader of the Belgian Impressionists, as one of the founding members of the artist group Vie et Lumiére  (Life and Light) in 1904 until it, too, disbanded in 1914. By 1915, German troops occupied Belgium, including Brussels, its capital. Théophile “Théo” van Rysselberghe (1862-1926), Anna Boch in her Studio,  ca. 1889-1893. Oil on canvas, 37.4 x 25.5 in. Museum of Fine Arts, Springfield, MA. Image courtesy of Wikimedia Commons. Artistic Style Though Boch is perhaps best remembered for the luminous, Impressionist style of the genre scenes and landscapes she created for the majority of her career, she experimented with Pointillism in her earlier works especially during the 1890s. In 1887, Boch saw the Neo-Impressionist Georges Seurat’s Pointillist painting, A  Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte (1884-1886), which had a transformative effect on her aesthetic. Her brushstrokes were composed of small dabs of color but were freer and more expressive, putting her in the vanguard of the new artists:  “I am not lumped together with the old ones but put at the very forefront,"  she wrote to her brother Eugéne,  “I am so happy.”   As one critic remarked at the time, “Anna Boch has admirably deployed the tenets of Pointillism, taking its sparkling light and leaving the idiosyncrasies of the process behind.”   Boch produced her first Pointillist painting in 1889. Selected Works Tijdens de Elevatie  ( During the Elevation ), 1892-1893 Anna Boch (1848-1936), Tijdens de Elevatie   (During the Elevation ), 1892-1893. Oil on canvas, 29.3 x 44.4 in. Mu.Zee, Ostend, Belgium. Image courtesy of  Wikimedia Commons. One of Boch’s works in the Pointillist style called During the Elevation  (1892-1893) depicts worshippers–men, women, a young girl–entering a country church for Sunday service. Heads bowed, they enter the church in procession, their shadows silhouetted in mauve on the stone walkway. The women wear white caps on their heads. An elderly, gray-haired man brings up the rear poignantly moving with one knee resting on a wooden chair. He is the heart of the composition. To the left is the church cemetery, its graves marked by crosses. Behind the church is a silo and the thatched buildings of the village. Boch’s painting consists of loose, layered spots of color in a much freer version of Pointillism than that employed by her male contemporaries. Retour de la Messe par les Dunes (Return from Mass through the Dunes), 1893-1895 Anna Boch (1848-1936), Retour de la Messe par les Dunes (Return from Mass through the Dunes), 1893-1895. Oil on canvas, 19.6 x 26.3 in. Musée d'art de la Province de Hainaut, Charleroi, Belgium. Image courtesy of the Musée d'art de la Province de Hainaut. Boch’s Return from Mass through the Dunes (1893-1895) likewise depicts a church procession. Here, instead of entering a church for service, the people are leaving. A group of sketchily painted, faceless figures including an elderly man and woman, and a mother and several children are seen departing from the church in the background. The church and the figures of the congregants are indistinct, suggested in the sandy, coastal landscape. All is portrayed in shades of sunshine, mauve, green, blue and brown. From 1890 onwards, Boch’s painting was characterized by a significant use of the color mauve, which she used in particular to mark the shadows of her characters.  Indeed, mauve shadows dapple the sand and dunes here, as well as the church and the clouds in the sky giving the painting its dimensionality. En Juin (In June), 1894 Anna Boch (1848-1936),  En Juin (In June), 1894. Oil on canvas, dimensions unavailable. Musée des Beaux-Arts, Charleroi, Belgium. Image courtesy of Art Errors. In June (1894) presents the profile of a dark-haired young woman in a lacy white dress with matching parasol. She is standing by the steps of La Closiére, the Boch family’s castle in Saint-Vaast-la-Hougue, a commune on the east coast of the Cotentin peninsula in northwestern France. Purple clematis cascades down the stone bannister, mixing with other flowers and the grass below and stopping on a massive pedestal column with an urn of yellow flowers on top. Clasping her parasol in one hand, the woman reaches to touch a purple blossom with the other. The way Boch captures the sunlight and shadow is reminiscent of During the Elevation.  A year later, in February 1895, Boch exhibited In June at the Salon de La Libre Esthétique in Brussels, where it received rave reviews for the manner in which she evoked the heat of summer. A few weeks after the exhibition opening, the Belgian State purchased the painting and gave it to the Musée des Beaux-Arts in Charleroi. It was the first time one of her paintings had sold. The Mu.ZEE art museum in Ostend, Belgium, included  In June in its acclaimed 2023 exhibition, “Anna Boch, An Impressionist Journey” celebrating the 175th anniversary of her birth that later traveled to the Musée des Beaux-Arts de Pont-Aven in France. The Shores of Brittany (Coast of Brittany),  ca. 1901 Anna Boch (1848-1936), The Shores of Brittany (Coast of Brittany) , ca. 1901. Oil on canvas, 42.5 x 57.6 in. Royal Museums of Fine Arts of Belgium, Brussels. Image courtesy of Wikimedia Commons. By 1900, Pointillism had gone out of fashion and Boch’s works became solidly Impressionistic for the remainder of her life. The Shores of Brittany ( Coast of Brittany, ca. 1901) portrays the pink-tinged cliffs along the coast of Brittany, France, on the English Channel. Composed primarily of beiges and blues with mauve and green hues, Boch captures the effect of waves cresting on the rocks, some of which are half-submerged in the water, and the unique colors of the granite. Grasses cover the top of the cliffs. In the distance, the billowing white of sailboats can be seen. The entire painting shimmers in sunshine. The Royal Museums of Fine Arts of Belgium purchased  The Shores of Brittany in 1902 .   Portrait of Anna Boch in her home, Villa Anna, in Ixelles, surrounded by her art. Date and photographer unknown. Image courtesy of   DASartes. Art Collection In 1889, Boch began buying avant-garde paintings, eventually building a collection that came to encompass over 400 Post-Impressionist paintings, a third of which were by women artists including Berthe Art (1857-1934), Euphrosine Beernaert (1831-1901), Jean Canneel (1889-1963), Lucie Cousturier (1876-1925), Anna De Weert (1867-1950) and Nina Alexandrowicz (1888-1945). Prominent works in the collection also included Paul Gauguin Conversation in the Meadows, Pont Aven  (1888), Georges Seurat The Seine at La Grande Jatte  (1888), and Paul Signac La Calanque  (The Cove, 1906) in addition to works by Henry Moret (1856-1913), Émile Bernard (1868-1941), and Jan Toorop (1858-1928). In 1890, at the Les XX  Art Expo in Brussels, Boch purchased Van Gogh’s 1888 painting, La Vigne Rouge (The Red Vineyard at Montmajour) for 400 francs ($1600 in today’s value) where it was exhibited publicly for the first time. Boch later sold the painting to a Paris art gallery in 1910 where it was bought by Ivan Morozov (1871-1921), a Russian businessman and art collector. It is now in the Pushkin State Museum of Fine Arts in Moscow and considered one of the world’s most prestigious and valuable paintings . Vincent van Gogh (1853-1890),  La Vigne Rouge  (The Red Vineyard at Montmajour), 1888. Oil on canvas, 29.5 x 36.6 in. Pushkin State Museum of Fine Arts, Moscow, Russia. Image courtesy of  Wikimedia Commons.   Boch purchased Van Gogh’s 1889 Plaine de la Crau  (Peach Trees in Blossom) at the Tanguy Gallery in Paris for 350 francs (about $1400 today) after Van Gogh’s death in 1891. Julien Tanguy (1825-1894), a French painter and owner of the combined gallery and art supply shop, was a close friend of Van Gogh’s, both displaying his work and painting three portraits of him. Plaine de la Crau  was acquired by the British industrialist and art collector Samuel Courtauld (1876-1947) in 1927 for 9,000 pounds or only about $11,990 in today’s dollars . It now hangs in the collection of the Courtauld Institute of Art in London.  Vincent van Gogh (1853-1890), Plaine de la Crau (Peach Trees in Blossom), 1889. Oil on canvas, 25.5 x 31.8 in. The Courtauld Institute of Art, London, UK (Samuel Courtauld Trust). Image courtesy of The Courtauld Institute of Art. Death and Honors In 1903, Boch was named a Knight of the Order of Leopold in Belgium. In 1919, she was appointed Belgium’s Officer of the Order of the Crown and in 1928, Officer of the Order of Leopold. While Boch continued to paint and exhibit until the end of her life, she unfortunately went deaf and lost her ability to make music, which deeply affected her. She died at the age of 88 on February 25, 1936, in Ixelles, Belgium, where she is interred. In her will, Boch arranged for the sale of much of her art collection and for the proceeds to pay for the retirement of needy artist friends. She also donated some of her own paintings and some from her collection to various museums including the Royal Museums of Fine Arts of Belgium in Brussels, the Musée d’Orsay in Paris, and the Guggenheim Museum in New York. She left a further 140 of her paintings to her godchild, Ida van Haelewijn, who was the daughter of her gardener, Antoine van Haelewijn, and the subject of many of them. In 1968, Boch’s great nephew, Luitwin von Boch, an entrepreneur and CEO of Villeroy & Boch Ceramics, acquired Ida’s entire collection, but let it remain with Ida until her death in 1992. Exhibition History and Documentary The first retrospective of Boch’s paintings took place in 1994 at the Pontoise museum in Pontoise, France.  In 2000, the Belgian art historian Therése Thomas curated the retrospective “Anna Boch 1848-1936” at the Royal Museum of Mariemont at Morlanwelz and in 2005 she published a catalog raisonné of Boch. Another exhibition about Boch’s life and work was in 2010 at the Vincent van Gogh Huis Museum in Zundert, Netherlands. The permanent Anna and Eugéne Boch Exposition opened on March 30, 2011, at the Villeroy & Boch Ceramic Museum in Mettlach, Germany; while in 2015, the Belgian director and writer Françoise Levie completed a documentary about Boch and Van Gogh entitled Anna and Vincent. The film premiered at the Wellington Museum in Waterloo, south of Brussels, on January 19, 2016. To learn more about Anna Boch, her art, and her art collection, visit the website Anna Boch.com , established in 2011 to preserve Boch’s legacy.

by Emily Burkhart August 30, 2024 Aurora Reyes at work, ca. 1937. Anonymous photographer. Secretariat of Culture, Mexico. Image courtesy of Mexico Desconocido.   “I love freedom above all else.” -Aurora Reyes Flores Aurora Reyes Flores (1908-1985), better known as Aurora Reyes, was an artist, poet, teacher, and political activist. She was the first exponent of Mexican muralism (1920s-1950s), art projects funded by the government in the wake of the Mexican Revolution (1910-1920) to help unify the people and foster a national identity, or Mexicanidad. She was also the first woman to receive an official mural commission from the government, resulting in her most celebrated work, Atentado a las Maestras Rurales  (Attack on the Rural Teachers, 1936) created for the lobby of the Centro Escolar Revolución (Revolution School Center) in Mexico City. While not as renown as Diego Rivera (1886-1957), José Clemente Orozco (1883-1949), or David Siqueiros (1896-1974), known as Los Tres Grandes  (The Three Greats) of Mexican muralism, Flores brought a feminist perspective to her work that they did not. She also taught drawing and painting for decades, organized for teachers unions, and fought for the rights of women, the working class, and the poor; earning her the nickname, la magnolia iracunda (the fiery magnolia). In addition, she was an accomplished poet and founding member of the feminist group Las Pavorosas  (The Terrifying Ones) dedicated to fighting for women’s rights, suffrage, and gender equality for Mexican women. Although she received much acclaim in her lifetime, after her death in 1985, Flores fell into obscurity. Her murals fell into disrepair, one was lost. Today, she remains little known outside of art circles and her native Mexico. Portrait of Aurora Reyes Flores. Photographer and date unknown. Image courtesy of the Archives of Women Artists, Research, and Exhibitions. Early Life and Education Aurora Reyes Flores was born in Hidalgo del Parral in the state of Chihuahua, Mexico, on September 9, 1908, two years before the outbreak of the revolution, to Captain León Reyes, a soldier, and his wife Luisa Flores. Her paternal grandfather, Bernardo Reyes, was a military general, and her uncle, Alfonso Reyes, a well-known writer and scholar. In 1913, due to political persecution and her grandfather’s involvement in La Decena Trágica  (the Ten Tragic Days), a failed coup d'état by opponents of president Francisco I. Madero between February 9 and 19, Flores’s father went into hiding for a year. To avoid government backlash, Flores and her mother fled to Mexico City. Forced into poverty, her mother baked bread that they sold at the Lagunilla market to survive. There, Flores suffered firsthand the harshness of life for the country’s most marginalized classes. Her childhood experiences shaped her political convictions, encouraging her to fight for social justice on behalf of the rights of women, the working class, and the poor throughout her adult life.   When the persecution against her family lessened in 1921, Flores began classes at the National Preparatory School;  however, she was soon expelled after an altercation with another student over her family’s political connections. During her brief attendance at the National Preparatory School she did meet the future artist Frida Kahlo (1907-1954) who would become a lifelong friend and whose portrait she later painted in 1946, Retrato Frida frente al espejo (Portrait of Frida in Front of the Mirror). Kahlo would introduce her to Diego Rivera and the Mexican Communist Party. Aurora Reyes (1908-1985), Retrato Frida frente al espejo  (Portrait of Frida in Front of the Mirror), 1946. Oil on canvas, dimensions unavailable. Instituto Chihuahuense de la Cultura, Chihuahua, Mexico. Image courtesy of the Archives of Women Artists, Research, and Exhibitions. Soon after her expulsion, Flores began attending the National School of Fine Arts where she took evening painting classes, graduating in 1924. She had her first solo art exhibition at age eighteen in 1925 at the Galería ARS. That same year, she married the journalist and writer Jorge Godoy (1891/2-?) with whom she would have two sons, Héctor, born in 1926, and Jorge in 1931. Post-divorce, Flores and Godoy never saw each other again, leaving Flores to raise their sons on her own. From 1927 onwards, beginning at age nineteen and for the next thirty-seven years, she taught painting and drawing at the Secretariat of Public Education in Mexico City. In 1937, she co-founded the avant-garde collective Liga de Escritores y Artistas Revolucionarios or LEAR (the League of Writers and Revolutionary Artists), a group dedicated to promoting the ideals of the Mexican Revolution and struggles of the working class through art.   Atentado a las maestras rurales (Attack on the Rural Teachers, 1936) Aurora Reyes (1908-1985), Atentado a las maestras rurales  (Attack on the Rural Teachers), 1936. Fresco, 86 ft. Instituto Chihuahuense de la Cultura, Chihuahua, Mexico. Image courtesy of the Archives of Women Artists, Research, and Exhibitions. Flores’s most famous mural,  Atentado a las maestras rurales (Attack on the Rural Teachers, 1936) , originally titled The Murdered Teacher, was painted for the lobby of the Centro Escolar Revolución in a downtown neighborhood of Mexico City. The Mexican government commissioned Flores and LEAR to create murals for the school to promote its embodiment of a new form of “socialist education” in the country .  Attack on the Rural Teachers commemorates the real-life massacre of sixteen teachers in the village of San Felipe Torres Mocha in the state of Guanajuato. During the 1930s, rural school teachers, many of them women, were regularly attacked by zealous supporters of Catholic-controlled education in the country.  Flores blamed the Catholic Church for supporting these actions. Indeed, the man at the center of the mural wears a scapular, a Catholic necklace associated with devotion to the Virgin Mary. Barefoot with his face obscured by a sombrero, he violently beats a teacher with the stock of his gun. The teacher’s face and body lie contorted in pain, arms flailing helplessly. To the left, another man in a hat with his back to the viewer, clutches her hair in a tight fist while holding pages torn from a book. His arms and legs eerily form the shape of a swastika. On the far right, three children, two boys and a girl, stand in the doorway of the schoolhouse. The taller boy in front stares in horror, the girl behind him with her hand on his shoulder looks shocked while the younger boy in the background buries his face in the girl’s hair, unable to watch the violence taking place. A ttack on the Rural Teachers was featured in the 2018 group exhibition, “The Mexican Muralism Movement” at the Central University of New York (CUNY) alongside works by Diego Rivera, Fernando Leal, José Clemente Orozco, and David Alfaro Siqueiros. Death and Exhibition History Aurora Reyes Flores died at the age of seventy-six on April 26, 1985. She was the subject of the 2011 biography, Aurora Reyes: Alma de Montaña (Aurora Reyes: Mountain Soul) by Margarita Aguilar Urbán, which was named Best Book of 2011 by the Mexican literary criticism website Sálon de Letras. Posthumous exhibitions included the 2007 group show, “Women Artists of Modern Mexico: Frida’s Contemporaries” at the National Museum of Mexican Art in Chicago. In 2015, the Metro Collective Transportation System, in collaboration with the National Institute of Fine Arts and Literature through the Museum of Art of Ciudad Juárez and the Salón de la Plástica Mexicana, paid tribute to Flores with an exhibition of her work at the Bellas Artes train station. The National Institute of Fine Arts and Literature and the Salón de la Plástica Mexicana also mounted the 2018 exhibition, “Aurora Reyes (1908-1985): The First Mexican Muralist” at the Museum of Art of Ciudad Juárez. Flores had a career retrospective at the Mexico City Museum entitled “Aurora Reyes: A Life in Art 1908-1985.’’ Curated by Ester Echeverría, the exhibition ran from March 14-May 26, 2019. Flores’s contributions paved the way for other women muralists in Mexico, notably Elena Huerta Muzquiz, Rina Lazo, and Fanny Rabel.

By Emily Burkhart July 28, 2024 Rachel Ruysch (1664-1750), Roses, Convolvulus, Poppies and Other Flowers in an Urn on a Stone Ledge , ca. late 1680s. Oil on canvas, 42 1/2  x 33 in. National Museum of Women in the Arts, Washington, DC. Photo by Lee Stalsworth. Image courtesy of the  National Museum of Women in the Arts. Introduction A specialist in the painting of flowers, the Dutch still-life artist Rachel Ruysch (1664-1750) developed her own style of asymmetric floral composition. Her paintings also combine a scientific eye with a keen sense of observation perfected under the influence of her anatomist and botanist father who encouraged her art. During a career spanning more than six decades, Ruysch became the most documented woman painter of the Dutch Golden Age.  She painted professionally, taking commissions and signing and dating all her works. Unlike many of her female contemporaries, she did not give up painting after marriage but continued to paint even while raising ten children. Ruysch painted from the age of fifteen until she was eighty-three. She produced several hundred paintings of which more than 250 have been documented, completing her last known still life in 1747 three years prior to her death. Ruysch was the first female Dutch artist to win international recognition in her own lifetime and her paintings routinely sold for more than that of Rembrandt van Rijn (1606-1669), the leading portraitist and most famous Dutch artist of the era. Though still lifes today are often regarded as a lesser form of artistic expression, Ruysch’s reputation has not diminished. She is regarded as one of the most talented still-life artists of either sex by art historians.  Godfried Schalcken (1643-1706), Portrait of Rachel Ruysch (1664-1750) , before 1706. Oil on canvas, 28.2 x 24.4 in. The Wilson, Cheltenham, UK. Image courtesy o f Wikimedia Commons. Early Life One of twelve siblings, Rachel Ruysch was born June 3, 1664, in The Hague, Netherlands. She was surrounded by art and science her entire life. Her father, Frederik Ruysch, was a well-known physician and professor of anatomy and botany as well as an amateur painter who published both textual and graphic descriptions of botanical discoveries. With his trained scientific mind, Frederik observed and recorded nature with great accuracy, a skill he instilled in his daughter. He also collected art, notably the paintings of local artist Otto Marseus van Schrieck (ca. 1613-1678), who was known for his depictions of dark, fungi- and insect-glutted forest floors–a genre known as sottobosco (Italian for “undergrowth”) which would influence Ruysch’s later work. Her mother, Maria Post, came from a creative background as well. Her mother’s father, Pieter Post, was initially a landscape and battle scene painter before pivoting to architecture. In the 1640s, he was appointed court painter and architect for Prince Frederik Hendrik and settled in The Hague. Maria’s paternal uncle Frans Post was also an artist, specializing in landscape painting. When Rusych was three years old, her family moved to Amsterdam, where she was primarily raised. Beginning in 1667, her father served as Amsterdam’s praelector (college officer) of anatomy and took positions as a professor of botany and supervisor of the city’s botanical garden.  His reigning achievement was his famed collection of anatomical and botanical curiosities–a five-room assemblage of embalmed and wax-injected organs, animals, plants, and other oddities which he posed in artful dioramas and publicly exhibited–that Rachel used to hone her drawing skills. These early drawings were mainly studies of insects and flowers. Frederik encouraged his daughter’s artistic pursuits and cultivated her talent. Artistic Training Further influencing Ruysch’s vision and future direction was the family’s location in Amsterdam on Bloemgracht  (the “flower canal”), an area famed for its natural beauty. She studied under the Dutch flower painter Willem Van Aelst (1627-1683) to whom she apprenticed in 1679 at the age of fourteen, a rare opportunity for a young woman at the time. Since moving there in 1657, Van Aelst had become widely recognized as Amsterdam’s premier painter of still lifes and flowers  and was known for his spiraling compositions that eschewed the convention of symmetrical arrangements . Van Aelst taught Ruysch how to arrange bouquets so they would look spontaneous and less formalized, producing a more realistic and three-dimensional effect in her work. Sometimes she would use real moss to apply paint to her pictures, a method borrowed from both Van Aelst and Van Schriek, as well as butterfly wings to give her surfaces texture. Her earliest paintings began appearing around 1680 and consisted mostly of flower studies and woodland scenes. Ruysch continued as a pupil of van Aelst until his death in 1683. Rachel Ruysch and Michiel van Musscher (1645-1705), Rachel Ruysch , 1692. Oil on canvas, 30 x 25 in. The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, NY. Image courtesy of Hyperallergic . By the time she was eighteen, Ruysch was producing and selling independently signed works in her own studio, as the 1692 collaborative self-portrait with Dutch artist Michiel van Musscher attests. Her prices were high enough that she only had to complete a few paintings a year. As she became more accomplished, she taught her father and younger sister Anna (1666-1754) her techniques as well. Anna Elisabeth Ruysch also became a noted still-life artist, although she never attained the stature of her older sister and stopped painting when she married at the age of twenty-one. However, because Anna rarely signed her work, only a small number of paintings can be attributed to her with certainty  and just ten of her signed works survive. Marriage and Family Juriaen Pool (1666-1745), Portrait of the Painter Rachel Ruysch, ca. 1710-1720. Oil on canvas, 32 x 25 in. Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen, Rotterdam, The Netherlands. Image courtesy of the Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen. In 1693, at twenty-nine years of age, Ruysch married the Amsterdam portrait painter and lace dealer Juriaen Pool (1666-1745), who painted a well-known portrait of her sometime between 1710 and 1720. The couple reportedly enjoyed a happy marriage and had ten children together. Despite marital and motherly demands, Ruysch continued to paint and produce commissions for an international circle of patrons. She also continued to sign her work with her maiden name. Most women of the time were expected to participate in traditional feminine art forms, such as sewing or spinning, but Ruysch was able to carry on with her painting because her contribution to the family’s income allowed the couple to hire help to care for their children.   Ruysch and Pool moved their young family to The Hague in 1699, where she was offered membership in the academic artists club, Confrerie Pictura, as their first female member. In 1701, both she and her husband joined the Guild of St. Luke, the city’s association of painters. Seven years later, they were invited to Düsseldorf, Germany, to serve as court painters to Duke Johann Wilhelm van der Pfalz II, the Elector Palatine of Bavaria (1658-1716), who was named godfather to Ruysch’s tenth and last child, a son, born in 1711 when she was forty-seven years old. She and Pool remained court painters until the prince’s death in 1716. They then returned to Amsterdam. With her meticulous eye for detail and composition, Ruysch’s artworks were again in great demand by the Dutch nobility. Dutch Flower Painting Ruysch’s career paralleled the rise of the Dutch horticultural industry and the science of botany. The Netherlands became the largest importer of new and exotic plants and flowers from around the world.  Once valued primarily for their use as herbs or in medicine, flowers became appreciated for their beauty and fragrance, as prized luxuries and desirable status symbols for the wealthy.   The tulip, featured in many of Ruysch’s paintings, was the most exotic having been introduced from Turkey in the late 16th century.   During this era, art was divided into two categories: “greater” and  “lesser.” The greater art category was composed of religious and historical paintings. The lesser was still life, portrait, and landscape. These latter artistic areas were considered more appropriate for women, with women artists particularly attracted to still life. Overall, professional painting was considered a male domain and it was widely believed that women were incapable of true artistic genius. However, Ruysch stood out from her female contemporaries because of her ambition and for the realism and scientific accuracy of her work.   Moreover, her diagonal compositions differed from the more compact and symmetrical arrangements most other women painters employed. Selected Works Roses, Convolvulus, Poppies and Other Flowers in an Urn on a Stone Ledge,  ca. late 1680s  Rachel Ruysch (1664-1750), Roses, Convolvulus, Poppies and Other Flowers in an Urn on a Stone Ledge , ca. late 1680s. Oil on canvas, 42 1/2  x 33 in. National Museum of Women in the Arts, Washington, DC. Photo by Lee Stalsworth. Image courtesy of the  National Museum of Women in the Arts. One of Ruysch’s earliest floral still lifes, Roses, Convolvulus, Poppies and Other Flowers in an Urn on a Stone Ledge  (ca. late 1680s) is representative of her painterly style. The architectural setting, a hallmark of her work, was a new compositional trend among flower painters in Amsterdam. The dark background and dramatic lighting were also characteristic of Baroque painting in the seventeenth century. She captured each detail of every flower, highlighting individual colors, form, and texture from the veins of the foliage (which she felt were just as important as the flowers themselves) to the faint yellow powder of pollen on the white rose. Typical of her still lifes, Ruysch included insects among the flowers, adding an entomological touch to the painting. Butterflies, a dragonfly, a small bee, and a spider were added with fine brushes after the rest of the paint had dried. Unlike other female contemporaries, Ruysch painted her flowers from all angles as evidenced by the backside of the sunflower with its curling green stem facing forward at the top of the composition and the side presentation of the poppies on the right of the canvas. The larger drooping pink rose and smaller flowers below it along with the wilted leaves on the lower left of the canvas symbolize decay. They are reminders of mortality and the fleeting nature of life, known as vanitas .   A Still Life with Devil’s Trumpet, a Cactus, a Fig Branch, Honeysuckle and Other Flowers in a Blue Glass Vase Resting on a Ledge, ca. 1690 Rachel Ruysch ( 1664-1750) , A Still Life with Devil's Trumpet, a Cactus, a Fig Branch, Honeysuckle and Other Flowers in a Blue Glass Vase Resting on a Ledge , ca. 1690. Oil on canvas, 18.7 x  15.7 in. Private collection. Image courtesy of Artsy. Ruysch often introduced new flora and fauna from Dutch trading voyages into her work, as well as unusual varieties of flowers, fruits, and insects, such as she did in A Still Life with Devil’s Trumpet, a Cactus, a Fig Branch, Honeysuckle and Other Flowers in a Blue Glass Vase Resting on a Ledge (ca. 1690). In this piece, she depicted a cactus, making her one of the first Western painters to include cacti in her still lifes . She also included a ripe kiwano, or African horned melon,   a tropical fruit native to Africa, Australia, and some islands in the Pacific . A cross-section of kiwano can be seen in the bulbous, spiky orange shape with glistening red seeds at the center of the bouquet above the green fig branch and to the left of the white devil’s trumpet or jimson weed. For this work, Ruysch used a cooler palette primarily composed of gray, green, white, and blue hues with pops of yellow, orange, red, and lavender. Shadows can be seen on the ledge, cast from the flowers, leaves, and translucent glass vase, in which the stems are visible. The torn leaves and holes from insects in the foliage at the bottom of the bouquet are memento mori symbols, acting as a reminder of the inevitably of death. Still Life with Bouquet of Flowers and Plums,  1704 Rachel Ruysch (1664-1750), Still Life with Bouquet of Flowers and Plums , 1704. Oil on canvas, 36.2 x 27.5 in. Royal Museums of Fine Arts of Belgium, Brussels. Image courtesy of Wikimedia Commons. Completed while Ruysch was working in The Hague, Still Life with Bouquet of Flowers and Plums  (1704) is not as densely packed as some other pieces. The architectural setting is less defined with the bouquet resting on a wooden surface. The greenery nearly blends into the background while the blossoms form a series of S-curves instead of strong diagonals . A vase is barely discernible between the plums and trailing leaves on the ledge where a fat beige moth with eyelets on its wings perches. Other insects include a beetle on top one of the purple plums, a dragonfly eating a leaf on the lower right, a pale green and white moth on top of a small reddish primrose, and other small insects scattered throughout the bouquet.  Feminist art historians and professors Ann Sutherland Harris and Linda Nochlin (1931-2017) included Rusych in their groundbreaking 1976 exhibition and accompanying book, Women Artists: 1550-1950, the first international exhibition of art by women artists that included eighty-three artists from twelve countries. The authors note that Still Life with Flowers and Plums is   one of the best examples of Ruysch’s compositional skills and ability to suggest movement, "as if a gentle breeze were ruffling the whole arrangement."   Indeed, the blossoms do appear to sway. Still Life of Roses, Tulips, a Sunflower and Other Flowers in a Glass Vase with a Bee, Butterfly and Other Insects Upon a Marble Ledge, 1710 Rachel Ruysch (1664-1750), Still Life of Roses, Tulips, a Sunflower and Other Flowers in a Glass Vase with a Bee, Butterfly and Other Insects Upon a Marble Ledge , 1710. Oil on canvas, 35 x 27.9 in. The National Gallery, London, UK. Image courtesy of The National Gallery. Rachel Ruysch (1664-1750), Still Life of Roses, Tulips, a Sunflower and Other Flowers in a Glass Vase with a Bee, Butterfly and Other Insects Upon a Marble Ledge , 1710. Oil on canvas, 35 x 27.9 in. The National Gallery, London, UK. Image courtesy of The National Gallery. Still Life of Roses, Tulips, a Sunflower and Other Flowers in a Glass Vase with a Bee, Butterfly and Other Insects Upon a Marble Ledge  (1710) is one of many paintings Ruysch completed while she and her husband were court painters in Düsseldorf, Germany. It is now one of three flower paintings by Ruysch in London’s National Gallery. The blooms tightly pressed together in the vase give a three-dimensional quality to the composition. In fact, a successful Dutch still life painting was highly valued for its degree of skillful realism.  Interspersed among the blossoms are assorted beetles, butterflies, a dragonfly, a lady bug on the white hydrangea, a bee on the sunflower falling out of the vase, and, most prominently, a light green grasshopper with its wings extended on the marble ledge. According to Harris and Nochlin, Ruysch’s habit of depicting groups of specimens seldom seen together in the same season–beetles, butterflies, grasshoppers, and dragonflies–indicate an idealized representation. Of this trait, they suggested that Ruysch was: “in effect following the doctrine that it was the artist's duty to select from nature and to portray perfectly what nature could only render imperfectly. ” Fruit and Insects and Basket of Flowers (1711) Rachel Ruysch (1664-1750), Fruit and Insects , 1711. Oil on wood, 17.3  x  23.6 in. Galleria degli Uffizi, Florence, Italy. Image courtesy of Smarthistory . Two paintings from 1711, Fruit and Insects  and Basket of Flowers , are both  sotto bosco pieces, a sub-genre of still-life painting that emerged around 1650 in the Netherlands. Popularized by Otto Marseus van Schrieck, these works depicted fruits, plants, and flowers with small creatures on the ground in a forest-like or natural space.  In Fruit and insects,  Ruysch has portrayed dew-covered fruits and several creatures on a mossy, damp ground. Two red plums, a rusty pear, three white peaches, bunches of green, purple, and black grapes, an ear of yellow corn in the husk, and a green and yellow striped squash dominate the picture. In the foreground are a tan snail, a bird’s nest with several white speckled eggs upon which a fly rests, as well as a dark green striped lizard with its mouth agape looking intently at a butterfly hovering nearby. Other fauna include a forward-facing green dragonfly that nearly blends in on top of the leaves above the plums on the left, a fly that has landed on one of the white peaches, and an enormous blue and yellow stag beetle perched on top of the squash. Fruit and Insects  was one of a pair of paintings commissioned by Ruysch’s patron Johann Wilhem as a gift for his father-in-law, Cosimo III de’Medici, Grand Duke of Tuscany. The other painting in the pair, Basket of Flowers , features a wicker basket filled with delicately colored flowers, many of which appear in sprin g such as narcissus, tulips, and peonies. The blooms overflow the tiny, woven basket Ruysch has placed them in. The flowers seem to glow with an inner light against the black background, even as their gently wilted petals and overgrown blossoms exhibit the passage of destructive time.   Rachel Ruysch (1664-1750), Basket of Flowers , 1711. Oil on panel 18.1 x 24.4 in. Galleria degli Uffizi, Florence, Italy. Image courtesy of Wikimedia Commons. Ruysch has incorporated her usual butterfly, dragonfly, and bee motifs along with a caterpillar slithering along the stem of the dangling tulip on the lower left of the painting. Dr. Saskia Beranek has postulated that while  the two paintings have some compositional similarities, they seem to reflect different seasons: the fruits and squash seem to suggest late summer into fall, while the basket of flowers suggests spring and early summer.  Further, she suggests that perhaps the two paintings were intended to be compared, to provide a chance to compare and contrast between the two seasons. Left: Rachel Ruysch (1664-1750), Fruit and Insects , 1711. Oil on wood, 17.3  x  23.6 in. Galleria degli Uffizi, Florence, Italy. Image courtesy of Smarthistory .  Right: Rachel Ruysch, Basket of Flowers , 1711. Oil on panel, 18.1 x 24.4 in. Galleria degli Uffizi, Florence, Italy. Image courtesy of Wikimedia Commons. Still Life of Flowers in a Vase with a Bird’s Nest upon a Marble Ledge,  1738. Rachel Ruysch (1664-1750), Still Life of Flowers in a Vase with a Bird’s Nest upon a Marble Ledge , 1738. Oil on canvas, 17 ¼ x 15 ⅜ in. Image courtesy of Sotheby’s. Created when Ruysch was seventy-four years old and had already been painting nearly sixty years, Still Life of Flowers in a Vase with a Bird’s Nest upon a Marble Ledge  (1738) was discovered behind the door of a French country house in 1999. Found by an art auctioneer, the painting went on sale anonymously in Deauville, Normandy, on January 31,1999, where it sold for 2.9 million French francs, or the equivalent of $508,000. In December 2021, it was sold at Sotheby’s London for 1,346,000 British pounds or approximately $1,710,000. With advancing age, the rate of Ruysch’s output slowed after 1720 and the size of her canvases decreased. Still Life of Flowers in a Vase with a Bird’s Nest upon a Marble Ledge , c onsidered one of Ruysch’s most ambitious late flower pictures, is only some 17 x 15 inches yet the multi-floral bouquet consists of roses, anemones, a variegated tulip, narcissi, honeysuckle, forget-me-nots, poppies, primroses and a peony. In contrast to the dark backgrounds of her earlier works, the flowers are now set against a brighter background, a response to the lighter palette and growing color of the eighteenth century.   This luxurious arrangement of flowers is displayed in a dark glass vase set upon a marble ledge before a stone niche, with the light falling diagonally from the left. Ruysch has incorporated twigs, feathers, and moss into the bird’s nest, containing four tan-colored eggs. To the right is a blue blowfly with its wings open; and on the opposite side of the vase, in the shadows, is a black and yellow sand wasp. On the leaf of the flower hanging over the front of the vase is a small red and black butterfly. Crawling up the stem of the center tulip, is an orange and black cylinder leaf beetle, and resting atop a large leaf above the peony to the right, is a bumblebee. The painting was included in the 1998 catalog and monograph on the works of Ruysch by Dr. Marianne Berardi, Science Into Art: Rachel Ruysch’s Early Development as a Still-Life Painter , published by the University of Michigan. Death and Acclaim In 1750 at the age of eighty-six, Rachel Ruysch died. She was hailed as Hollants Kunstwonder  (“Holland’s art prodigy”), Onze vernuftige Kunstheldin (“Our subtle art heroine”), and the Onsterflyke Y-Minerf (“Immortal Minerva of the Amsterdam”) by her male contemporaries. Upon her death, eleven poets paid tribute to her in an anthology. Ruysch’s biographer, the contemporary painter Jan van Gool (1685–1763) described her in an interview for her biography in his Nieuwe Schouburg  published in 1750 as an “Art Goddess,” “Art Heroine” and the “Amsterdam Pallas. ” It is estimated that at the time of her death, Ruysch had painstakingly produced more than 250 paintings, an average of four or five  a year. Sadly, only about 100 of them are known to still exist.  In the past thirty years, there has been renewed interest in Ruysch’s oeuvre. In January 2000, the Dutch art magazine Kunstschrift devoted an entire issue to Ruysch. Her paintings were featured in several exhibitions at the National Museum of Women in the Arts in Washington, DC, in 1990-1991, 2011, 2015, and 2019-2020. Prominent European exhibitions including her work were “Still Life Paintings from the Netherlands 1550-1720” at the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam (1999) and “Each their own Reason: Women Artists in Belgium and the Netherlands 1500-1950” at the Museum voor Moderne Kunst in Arnhem in 2000. More recently, in 2021 at the Hallwylska Museet in Stockholm, Sweden, Ruysch was included in the group exhibition “The Flowers are in Bloom Again!” also featuring the still-life painters Catharina Backer, Ambrosius Bosschaert the Elder, and Pieter Faes. With her innovative techniques, Rachel Ruysch employed a style that can be seen as a transition from 17th-century to 18th-century flower painting.

By Emily Burkhart May 1, 2024 Eugenia Loli (b. 1973), High Cat, from the All Fun & Games series, nd. Digital collage. Image courtesy of Cargo Collective. It's important for me to say something with my artwork, so for the vast majority of my work there's a meaning behind them. Sometimes the narrative is witty or sarcastic, sometimes it's horrific with a sense of danger or urgency, sometimes it's chill. I leave it to the viewer's imagination to fill-in-the blanks of the story plot. -Eugenia Loli Eugenia Loli-Quéru (b. 1973), known professionally as Eugenia Loli, is a Greek Surrealist collage artist, painter, freelance illustrator, and filmmaker. She is best known for her digital collages. She creates amusing, often piercing social commentary using images scanned from her collection of vintage magazines and science fiction. Some of her creations capture a moment in time resembling a still frame from a surreal movie while others are purely fantastical, juxtaposing mundane earthly pursuits with the unearthly. Her many influences include “The Matrix” films; David Delruelle, a Belgian collagist; Bryan “Glass Planet” Olson, an American collagist; Julien Pacaud, a French artist, illustrator, and digital collagist; Kieron “Cur3es” Cropper, a British designer and collagist; and the Belgian Surrealist painter, René Magritte (1898-1967). Before becoming an artist, Loli worked as an artificial intelligence (AI) computer programmer, a technology journalist, and a music videographer for experimental indie artists in the San Francisco Bay Area of California, where she lived for twenty years. Since 2013, Loli’s collages have been featured in Teen Vogue, Glamour, Cosmopolitan, Vanity Fair, Forbes, VICE, Wired, New Scientist and The Guardian among other publications. Eugenia Loli in an undated photo. Photographer unknown. Image courtesy of the Public House of Art, Amsterdam, the Netherlands. Biography Born in Athens, Loli grew up in the village of Skiadas in the Preveza region of northwestern Greece. She studied computer programming and analysis in college, and her first job was in AI. She is also the former editor-in-chief of OSNews, an online computing newsletter that had been established in 1997 but then languished. After a period of inactivity, Loli relaunched the site in 2001 and stayed until 2005. She has written a personal blog, entitled  Eugenia’s Rants and Thoughts, since 2002. Loli made her first digital collage in April 2012 for an animated music video for the San Francisco Bay Area musician, philosopher, and political scientist John Maus. Besides California, she has lived in Germany, the UK, and Spokane, Washington. In early 2024, Loli and her French husband, Jean-Baptiste Quéru, a mobile software architect, returned to Greece to live in the Preveza area where she was raised. The following seven collages demonstrate her quirky sensibilities and techniques. Selected Works High Cat Eugenia Loli (b. 1973), High Cat, from the All Fun & Games series, nd. Digital collage. Image courtesy of Cargo Collective. In High Cat, from Loli’s All Fun & Games series, a long-whiskered calico wears thick, psychedelic cat’s eye-shaped glasses with multi-colored bullseye patterns on the lenses. Enveloped in a starry black background and with head cocked, a pipe dangles from the cat’s mouth billowing clouds or bubbles of cosmic “smoke,” semi circling the cat's head. These emissions waft toward what appears to be the moon in the upper left and Mercury to the right. This chill cat could be said to be “high” from the emissions of its pipe but also literally high as he/she improbably smokes in outer space. Prophetic Vision Eugenia Loli (b. 1973), Prophetic Vision, from the All Fun & Games series, nd. Digital collage. Image courtesy of Cargo Collective. Prophetic Vision incorporates traditional Surrealist themes while reflecting the influence of René Magritte. Open doors as a portal to another world–in this instance, another planet–are a hallmark of Magritte’s paintings. In the foreground, a blonde-haired young girl wears a puffed sleeve 1950’s pink and white party dress with pink sash, white shoes and socks. She peers cautiously around the doorframe of a well-appointed home judging from the moldings and the candelabra to the right of the door, also a classic Surrealist pictorial device. The candelabra’s teal candles are unlit, suggesting the unknown. Outside an otherworldly landscape of dunes features two gleaming white objects–a pointed obelisk and large sphere. In the sky, the green glow of a flying object or of a planet (possibly Mars) illuminates the shapes and the dunes below. All in all, there is something wondrous and mysterious about the girl, the building and the locale. Let Me Get That For You Eugenia Loli (b. 1973), Let Me Get That For You, from the Oh, L’amour series, nd. Digital collage. Image courtesy of Cargo Collective. Let Me Get That For You from Loli’s Oh, L’amour (Oh, Love) series, wittily explores a traditional heterosexual relationship dynamic. A smiling, 1950’s couple in a bright red canoe glide through a reddish-purple nebula in star-filled space. The couple appear to be on their way to or from a picnic judging from the wooden basket inside the canoe at the man’s feet. It looks as though Loli cut and pasted the image from a classic river or lake scene. The woman holds a water lily in one hand and a wide-brimmed straw hat in the other. One oar rests across the cross beam at the center of the canoe that divides it like the implied separate gender roles of the couple. The man holds onto the other oar while reaching down to pluck a star from the cosmic sea, for the woman (we suppose), hence the tongue-in-cheek title Let Me Get That For You. Every Act of Creation is First an Act of Destruction Eugenia Loli (b. 1973), Every Act of Creation is First an Act of Destruction, from the Mind Alteration series, nd. Digital collage. Image courtesy of Cargo Collective. A surprising albeit gruesome work, Every Act of Creation is First an Act of Destruction, finds two men in black business attire with crisp white shirts sharing a meal at a fine restaurant. A folded white cloth napkin rests on the table in front of the man on the left who sports a pink and black striped tie while the man on the right has donned a white polka dotted black tie. On top of the aqua tablecloth are the pair’s water and wine glasses, a burning oil lamp, bread basket, and butter dish. Around their necks small flashlights or perhaps microphones dangle strangely from lanyards. They both wear what may be matching signet rings on their right ring fingers which could signify common membership in a fraternal order of some type–manhood, perhaps. Loli has replaced the heads of both with explosions. The smoke and gas billowing from the head of the left hand man disappears into the horizontal picture frame behind him as though into the outside world, where a nearly cloudless blue sky can be seen darkening with his eruption. Behind the man on the right in a vertical frame, a craggy mountain range is surrounded by swirling mist and wispy clouds in a deep blue sky. The flaming explosion emerging from his collar also enters this idyllic scene. The enigmatic title of the collage is said to be a quote from Pablo Picasso referring to the necessity of the old being swept away before anything new can arise in art, much like his legacy achieved. With this collage, Loli may be saying that the old male-dominated order must be blown up before a more equitable society can emerge. Quarrymen Eugenia Loli (b. 1973), Quarrymen, from the Mind Alteration series, nd. Digital collage. Image courtesy of Cargo Collective. The title Quarrymen refers both to the British musical group John Lennon founded in Liverpool in 1956 that preceded the founding of the Beatles in 1960 and to the Beatles’ groundbreaking 1967 album, Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band. The Beatles–Ringo Starr, John Lennon, Paul McCartney, and George Harrison–wore the brightly colored military-style uniforms depicted in the collage on the cover of this album. Loli matches the background stripes to the regalia of each of the Beatles. As in Every Act of Creation is First an Act of Destruction, Loli has removed their heads and replaced them with a surrealistic element but here, instead of explosions, she gives each man a bouquet of flowers. Ringo is on the far left in the magenta uniform, John is in lime green to the right of Ringo, Paul is in the blue uniform with his knees drawn up on John’s right, and George is in red on the far right. A brilliant butterfly perches on Paul’s right shoulder as another one hovers above the bouquet on George’s head. Loli has subverted the iconic album cover and created something new as do caterpillars when they turn into butterflies and as did the Beatles when they unleashed their masterpiece on the public. Natural History Museum Eugenia Loli (b. 1973), Natural History Museum, from the Reportaz series, nd. Digital collage. Image courtesy of  Cargo Collective. For Natural History Museum, Loli takes a black and white image of people contemplating what should have been paintings within ornate frames in a museum gallery and replaced the paintings. She instead inserts gigantic flora that literally bursts out of the frames making it indeed a natural history museum rather than an art museum. The viewers stand unfazed, quietly pondering the unearthly or possibly irradiated plant specimens. In lieu of an overhead light or chandelier and befitting the collage title, another huge spray of flowers hangs from the ceiling. A beach vista stretches beyond an open doorway in the gallery, where a saucer-shaped spaceship can be seen taking flight, suggesting that the UFO may have had something to do with the strange flora. Global Toasting Eugenia Loli (b. 1973), Global Toasting, from the Reportaz series, nd. Digital Collage. Image courtesy of Cargo Collective. Global Toasting portrays an old Toastmaster toaster from the sixties against a black background. Loli has placed flattened color images of the Earth and Moon in the bread slots. The collage wryly conveys a warning against global warming. If we do not take action, the Earth will soon be “toast,” as barren as the moon, thus ironically making a very serious and cautionary point. Recognition While Loli has exhibited in independent galleries and shows, and some of her work is in the permanent collection of the unique  Public House of Art Gallery in the Netherlands, she harbors a reluctance to market her work by traditional means. She has said that she doesn’t do exhibitions or work with galleries but does everything by herself online. Loli sells a few pieces a month but profits most from commissions. She has produced pieces for clients such as Urban Outfitters, Alice McCall (an Australian fashion house), and Venyx Jewelry. Loli’s collages can be seen in the films “The 9th Life of Louis Drax” (2016) and “Replicas” (2018). She has also created album art for the rock bands Highly Suspect and White Denim as well as numerous CD covers for various indie artists. In addition, she has illustrated thirty book covers, one of which was selected best book cover of the year by the The New York Times Book Review in 2016. Her collages have been included in the art books, The Age of Collage (2013) and Collage Makers (2015) both published by Monsa. In 2016, she released her own book, Living with Eugenia Loli: 32 Removable Art Prints that featured a wide range of her collages. To learn more about  Loli and see more of her digital work, visit her website on Cargo Collective and her social media pages on Twitter, Instagram, Flickr, and Tumblr.

By Emily Burkhart June 16, 2024 Florence Henri (1893-1982), Self-Portrait, 1928. Gelatin silver print, 9 ⅞ x 7 ¼ in.  J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles, CA. Image courtesy of the J. Paul Getty Museum. What I want above all in photography is to compose the image as I do with paintings. It is necessary that the volumes, lines, the shadows and light obey my will and say what I want them to say. And this under the strictest control of composition, because I do not try either to tell about the world or to tell about my thoughts. All that I know and the way in which I know it is made above all of abstract elements: spheres, planes, and grids with parallel lines offer me great resources. -Florence Henri Introduction The multidisciplinary artist Florence Henri (1893-1982) was a pioneering twentieth-century avant-garde painter and photographer with a background in piano composition. Best known for her experimental mirror photographs taken between 1928 and the late 1930s, Henri’s oeuvre is representative of the New Vision (Neues Sehen), a photography movement promoted by the Hungarian artist and theorist László Moholy-Nagy (1895-1946). Moholy-Nagly was an influential instructor at the Bauhaus school in Dessau, Germany, where Henri studied painting for a time. He advocated bringing science and technology into the arts, emphasizing form and function over aesthetics. Through photography, Henri became one of the few women artists involved in this male-dominated movement. The outbreak of World War II forced Henri to return her focus to painting as photographic supplies dwindled and also for fear of the Nazi’s labeling both her and her photographic work degenerate. She would not be recognized again for her pioneering photography until the 1970s, when she was in her eighties. Early Life Florence Montagne Henri was born in New York City on June 28, 1893, to a French father and German mother. Following the death of her mother in 1895, Henri and her father left the United States. She accompanied him as he traveled for work as the director of a petroleum company. Henri spent her childhood between maternal relatives in Silesia (now southwestern Poland), Munich, Vienna, a convent school in Paris, and family homes in London and on the Isle of Wight in the UK, where she and her father settled in 1906. Just two years later her father died and the now teenaged Henri went to live in Rome with her Aunt Annie and her husband, the Italian Futurist poet Gino Gori, who introduced Henri to the avant-garde. While in Italy, Henri continued the piano studies she had begun at the age of nine with the Italian pianist-composer Ferruccio Busoni (1866-1924) and became an excellent pianist by eighteen. She moved to Berlin around 1912 to further her musical education. Two years later, when the First World War broke out, she found herself trapped in Germany. To make ends meet, she composed music for silent films to earn a living. Art Education At about this time, Henri visited the Academy of Art in Berlin and decided to pursue painting instead of music, enrolling in 1914. Soon after, she met the German Jewish art critic and historian Carl Einstein (1885-1940), who became a close friend and mentor. Through Einstein, she became acquainted with Herwarth Walden (1878-1941) and other avant-garde artists. Beginning in 1922, Henri trained in the studio of the Latvian painter Johann Walter-Kurau (1869-1932). When she decided to move to Paris in 1924, she was denied entry into France and declared “stateless.” Through a marriage of convenience to Karl Anton Koster (they divorced in 1954), Henri attained Swiss citizenship. She was then permitted to reside in Paris. She took classes at the Académie Moderne and Académie Montparnasse in 1925, studying under the Cubist and Purist painters Fernand Léger (1881-1955), André Lhote (1885-1962), and Amédée Ozenfant (1886-1966). Florence Henri in her studio with some of her paintings, Saint-Tropez, France, summer 1926. Photographer unknown. Galleria Martini & Ronchetti, Florence Henri Archives, Genoa, Italy. Image courtesy of Hundred Heroines. In 1927, at the age of thirty-four, Henri returned to Germany to enroll at the Bauhaus school as a non-matriculating student. There she studied painting with Josef Albers (1888-1976), Paul Klee (1879-1940), and Vasily Kandinsky (1866-1944). While photography was not officially included in the curriculum until 1929, it had already been used for documentary, experimental, and publicity purposes. At the Bauhaus, she was introduced to the subject by her teacher and mentor, László Moholy-Nagy. Henri also developed a close friendship with Moholy-Nagy’s first wife, the British photographer Lucia Moholy (1894-1989), who encouraged Henri’s experimentation with the camera and took photographs of her, including the 1927 portrait below. Within a year, Henri pivoted again, this time abandoning painting for photography. Lucia Moholy (b. Austria-Hungary, 1894-1989), Florence Henri, 1927. Gelatin silver print, 14 ⅝ x 10 15/16 in. The Metropolitan Museum, New York, NY. Image courtesy of the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Henri returned to Paris in 1929 and opened a photographic studio out of which she taught photography and worked as a freelance commercial photographer in the fashion and advertising fields to support herself and her art. She completed commissions for portraits, advertising, and fashion for Vogue magazine, The New York Herald, and other publications. Among her students were the photographers Ilse Bing (1899-1998), Giséle Freund (1908-2000), and Lisette Model (1901-1983), each of whom became well-known in her own right. The New Vision (Neues Sehen) New Vision (Neues Sehen or Neue Optik in German) was an artistic movement that evolved in the 1920s out of the principles of the Bauhaus. The term was coined by Moholy-Nagy to describe the technological nature of the twentieth-century following World War I.  Avant-garde artists, commercial illustrators, and journalists turned to photography as if seeking to discover through its mechanisms and materials something of the soul of contemporary industrial society. The 1920s and 1930s were an innovative time as unconventional techniques such as abstract photograms or photomontages consisting of fragmented images, and combinations of photography and graphic design flourished. The New Vision aimed to look at the world through the camera lens, using it as a mirror to the reality of the everyday, and also a framing device for the documentary and experimental. Henri’s work in the late 1920s and throughout the 1930s reflected this new approach to photography and some of these images are included here. Selected Works Self-Portrait, 1928 Florence Henri (1893-1982), Self-Portrait, 1928. Gelatin silver print, 9 ⅞ x 7 ¼ in. J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles, CA. Image courtesy of the J. Paul Getty Museum. Henri took many self-portraits throughout her career, the earliest being 1928’s carefully composed Self-Portrait, one of her best-known. We see the upper half of Henri’s likeness reflected in a mirror against a wall. Except for a light-colored button on her right sleeve, she appears to be wearing a solid black shirt. She leans on her folded arms propped on a slatted wood table with her hands resting on her crossed forearms. Since only Henri’s reflection appears in the photograph, it is a picture of a picture, a study in light and dark. Lower down in front of the mirror, are two shiny spheres. Their reflection makes it appear as though there are four. Self-Portrait along with one of Henri’s still lifes that also featured mirrors were both published in the Dutch avant-garde journal i10 Internationale Revue on December 20, 1928. The photos were accompanied by a commentary from Moholy-Nagy. In what was the first critical assessment of Henri’s work, he asserted that: With Florence Henri’s photos, photographic practice enters a new phase, the scope of which would have been unimaginable before today….Reflections and spatial relationships, superposition and intersections are just some of the areas explored from a totally new perspective and viewpoint. Mirrors were a recurring “prop” in Henri’s early photographs, used not only in self-portraits and portraits of others, but also in still lifes and often in her commercial work as well. As Priscilla Frank observed, she used them “as a surrealist tool to disrupt perception, disorient the viewer and multiply her subject matter into infinity ambiguity.” Fruit, 1929 Florence Henri (1893-1982), Fruit, 1929. Gelatin silver print, 6 ⅝ x 9 ½ in. J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles, CA. Image courtesy of the J. Paul Getty Museum. In the still life Fruit (1929), Henri placed a pear in a dish on a tabletop as well as a lime and an apple directly on the table. Several small mirrors also arrayed on the table’s surface create different planes, jagged images, and reflections. The lime and the pear are in the viewer's field of vision, while the apple appears only as a reflection in a mirror. The fragmentation created is like that of a cubist painting. Henri’s photos were included in several prominent German photography exhibitions of the time, including Fotografie der Gegenwart (Contemporary Photography, 1929) in Berlin, Film und Foto (Film and Photo, 1929) in Stuttgart, and Das Lichtbild (The Photograph, 1930) in Munich, along with others across Europe and in New York throughout the 1930s. Portrait Composition (Woman with Cards), 1930 Florence Henri (1893-1982), Portrait Composition (Woman with Cards), 1930. Gelatin silver print, 11 in. x 8 13/16 in. The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, NY. Image courtesy of The Metropolitan Museum of Art. Another of Henri’s well-known photographs, Portrait Composition (Woman with Cards) from 1930 depicts a woman in full makeup, closed eyes with shadowed lids, mascaraed lashes, and penciled arched eyebrows. Her painted lips are parted slightly exposing a hint of teeth. She reclines, her bare right arm over her head, an eight of diamonds in her hand. Scattered on the bed above her are other playing cards, mostly indistinguishable. Arrayed as they are, the cards look like the woman may have simply fallen asleep during a game or that these are the cards she has drawn in the game of life. Or, the eight in her hand may symbolize the woman’s “sun card”–a person who is powerful and may be dominating. It may represent her changeable, independent nature, an intense desire for knowledge and a belief that knowledge is power. Whichever or whatever, the woman seems untroubled. The close cropping may have been inspired by the photos of Henri’s friend Lucia Moholy, who often employed this cropping technique as she did in her 1927 portrait of Henri. Moholy thought it better focused the eye thus revealing the essence and character of the subject. Both Henri and Moholy were inspired by the Russian filmmaker Sergei Eisenstein’s influential 1925 silent film Battleship Potemkin in which such close framing was used to emphasize the emotions and reactions of the actors. Nu, ca. 1930 Florence Henri (1893-1982), Nu, ca. 1930. Gelatin silver print, dimensions unavailable. Galleria Martini & Ronchetti, Florence Henri Archives, Genoa, Italy. Image courtesy of AnOther Magazine. In addition to portraiture, Henri shot a series of female nudes. Nu (1930) is an example. In an unadorned room on a disheveled bed, a woman in three-quarter view sits with knees tucked beneath her. She leans on one arm, the other hand caresses her neck. Her chin tilts upward, her eyes gaze downward. She exudes an ease with her nudity. Henri has employed her characteristic contrast of light and dark to highlight her sitter’s physicality without oversexualizing her. The light on her back throws the front of her torso chastely into shadow except in the triangular area made by her arm, thigh, and torso. There her backlit breast with a hint of nipple is sharply outlined. In 1935, Henri published this and other nude studies as a collection in the book, Femmes Nues (Female Nudes). Nature Morte (Roses), 1931 Florence Henri (1893-1982), Nature Morte (Roses), 1931. Silver gelatin print, 13.25 x 18.75 in. Edition 6/9. Holden Luntz Gallery, Palm Beach, FL. Image courtesy of Holden Luntz Gallery. In the 1931 photo entitled Nature Morte (Roses), a single rose lies on an unfolded sheet of paper while a stem with four leaves rests on an open envelope at the upper right. A mirror may reflect the rose and stem or it may be an actual second rose and stem–it is not clear what is or may not be a reflection. Nonetheless, it is an unconventional floral arrangement or “still life.” The close-up emphasizes the texture of the rose petals, their slight wilt, and the veining of the leaves. As the title implies, the rose and leaves are dying; but, of course, since they are cut, they are already dead. Their life has been stilled; it has unfolded. ROME (The Glory that Was Greece), 1934 Florence Henri (1893-1982), ROME (The Glory that Was Greece), 1934. Vintage gelatin silver photomontage, 9 x 11 5/16 in. Robert Koch Gallery, San Francisco, CA. Image courtesy of Robert Koch Gallery. Henri also experimented with photomontage, a technique adopted by Surrealist and Pop artists as well. Photomontage, the combination of two or more photographs (or pieces of them) to form a single image, came to prominence as a Dadaist form of political protest during the First World War in Germany. Henri was aware of the Dada Group from her time at the Bauhaus. Though not protest art, her Surrealist-inspired photomontage ROME (The Glory that Was Greece) evokes nostalgia for a bygone era. Henri was familiar with Greco-Roman ruins from her time in Italy. The sculptural head in the foreground has been toppled from its body, which is not shown, and rests on a blanket by the sea. The message seems bleak, a head without a body juxtaposed against the shore. On the horizon a distant mountain range nearly blends into a silvery-gray sky as the waves break. The ironic title of this photomontage comes from the middle stanza of the Edgar Allen Poe poem, “To Helen” (1831, revised by Poe in 1845): On desperate seas long wont to roam, Thy hyacinth hair, thy classic face, Thy Naiad airs have brought me home To the glory that was Greece. And the grandeur that was Rome. Whether Henri was familiar with the poem or the mythology of Helen is unknown but probable. The image is certainly suggestive. ROME (The Glory that Was Greece) was featured in the exhibitions, The Source (February-March 2008) and Fabricated Realities (July-August 2011), at the Robert Koch Gallery in San Francisco. Portrait Composition, 1937 Florence Henri (1893-1982), Portrait Composition, 1937. Gelatin silver print,11 7/10 x 8 7/10 in. Edition 2/9. Atlas Gallery, London. Image courtesy of Atlas Gallery. Portrait Composition from 1937 was one of Henri’s last photographs before the outbreak of the Second World War. One of her few works to feature a smiling subject, a woman in profile casually sits with her legs crossed in a chair on a balcony. She wears a floral patterned dress with mandarin collar. Her chin is tilted, her hair slightly tousled. She is framed by an awning or umbrella. Henri has positioned a mirror to reflect the opposite wall of the balcony, and the shadow of an armrest and the back of another chair can be seen. A column with a plant in a basket is partially visible. One can see the rooftops of buildings in the background. Henri has created a split-screen image with her placement of the mirror. Sunlight casts hard shadows caught in both the mirror and on the balcony where the woman sits, especially through the gridwork of the railing. It seems a meditation on reality. Soon, Henri’s output would decline significantly as photographic materials became difficult to obtain and her compositions would be considered degenerate by the Nazis occupying France. Late Career and Rediscovery With but a few notable exceptions, one being a series of photos of the American ballet dancer and member of the Choctaw Nation Rosella Hightower (1920-2008) in the 1950s, Henri returned almost exclusively to painting. After leaving Paris for Belleville-sur-Vie, a former commune in Western France in 1963, she gave up photography for painting full-time. In the 1970s, she moved to the village of Compiégne, where she lived and painted until the end of her life. If not for the efforts of an Italian gallerist named Giovanni Battista Martini, Henri would likely have fallen into obscurity. In the early 1970s, Martini came across a portfolio of Henri’s work in an old art magazine Stile Futurista and spent two years searching for the artist. After finding her in Compiégne, Martini and Henri worked together to catalog her archive before her death. In 1974, she had her first solo exhibition in four decades at the Galerie Wilde in Cologne, Germany, at which time a small portfolio of her photographs was also published. Henri died on July 24, 1982, at the age of 89. Posthumously, she has been included in a number of solo and group exhibitions, most recently at the Museum of Modern Art in New York in the exhibition, “Our Selves: Photographs by Women Artists from Helen Kornblum” that ran from April 16-October 10, 2022. Her work was also featured at the 2022 Venice Biennale. Despite her rediscovery in the 1970s, Florence Henri still remains little known outside of art circles today. Florence Henri in 1975. Photographer unknown. Galerie m, Bochum, Germany. Image courtesy of Galerie m.

by Emily Burkhart March 23, 2024 Clementine Hunter (ca. 1886-1988) in 1979. Photograph by Judith Sedwick as part of the Black Women Oral History Project, Schlesinger Library on the History of Women in America, Harvard University. Image courtesy of Wikimedia Commons. "I paint the history of my people" -Clementine Hunter One of the most celebrated twentieth-century Southern painters, the prolific Creole folk artist Clementine Hunter (ca. 1886-1988) created well over 5,000 paintings from the late 1930s until her death in 1988–an extraordinary output for someone who did not pick up a paintbrush and begin “marking pictures,” as she described it, until her mid-fifties. Hunter was illiterate and entirely self-taught.  Her work has drawn comparisons to Grandma Moses (1860-1961), another famous American folk artist who did not start painting until later in life, earning Hunter the nickname the “black Grandma Moses.” A descendant of slaves, Hunter’s “memory paintings,” as she also referred to her work, most often depict her experience of plantation life in the early twentieth-century in the Cane River Valley of Louisiana. Hunter drew upon her memories and dreams to create vivid paintings of picking cotton, harvesting pecans, boiling wash, funerals, baptisms, other religious scenes, recreation, and brawls at the local honky tonk as well as still lifes and even abstracts. She also produced a number of quilts and painted a renowned mural of plantation life located on the second floor of the African House on Melrose Plantation in Natchitoches Parish, where she spent most of her 101 years. Clementine Hunter (ca. 1886-1988), Grandmother’s Garden, 1962. Oil on board, 18 x 24 in. Gilley’s Gallery, Baton Rouge, Louisiana. Image courtesy of Gilley’s Gallery. Photograph of Clementine Hunter outside her cabin on Melrose Plantation in Natchitoches, Louisiana, in the 1960s. State Library of Louisiana. Image courtesy of 64 Parishes. Childhood and Early Life Clementine Hunter was born in late December 1886 into a family of sharecroppers on Hidden Hill Plantation in the Cane River Valley of northwestern Louisiana. She was the eldest of Mary Antoinette Adams and Janvier “John” Reuben’s seven children. Although her exact date of birth remains unknown and some sources cite her birth year as 1887,  Hunter said she was born around Christmas. She was of African, Native American, French, and Irish descent. Her maternal grandparents were Virginia slaves who were brought to Louisiana. Her paternal grandfather had been a horse trader during the Civil War who died before Hunter was born, but she was close to her paternal grandmother, a black and Native American woman she called mémé. Hunter was called Clémence early in her life but was baptized Clementiam on March 19, 1887, when she was about three months old. Her family used the nickname Tébé, French for “little baby.” Later she would call herself Clementine. When Hunter was around five years old, her parents sent her to St. John the Baptist Catholic Church School, but due to its harsh rules and segregationist policies, Hunter left after less than a year  never learning to read or write. She began working in the fields at Hidden Hill Plantation at the age of eight, picking cotton alongside her father. Throughout Hunter’s childhood, the family moved around the Cane River Valley wherever her father worked, living in Robeline, Cypress, and Alexandria. The family moved to Yucca (later renamed Melrose) Plantation in Natchitoches Parish in 1902 when she was twelve. Hunter lived at Melrose until it was sold to Southdown Land Company in 1970, after which she lived nearby in a trailer down a dirt road until her death in 1988. Melrose Plantation Melrose is one of the largest plantations in the United States built by and for free black people. It was declared a National Historic Landmark in 1974. Today, Melrose (and its African House with murals by Hunter), is one of twelve sites in the Historic Artists’ Homes & Studios network that celebrates the contributions of American women artists.  In 1902, Hunter’s father Janvier was hired as a laborer by John Hampton Henry, then owner of Melrose. Her mother died a few years later in 1905. Hunter herself worked on the plantation in several capacities initially picking cotton, as illustrated in her painting Picking Cotton (1950s) and doing laundry as shown in Washday (1950s). In autumn, she would also harvest pecans. Working six days a week much of the year, she worked at Melrose for seventy-five years. Clementine Hunter (ca. 1886-1988), Picking Cotton, 1950s. Oil on board, 20 x 24 in. Minneapolis Institute of Art, Minneapolis, Minnesota. Image courtesy of the Minneapolis Institute of Art. Clementine Hunter (ca. 1886-1988), Washday, 1950s. Oil paint on fiberboard, 23 15/16 x 23 15/16 x ¼ in. Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture, Washington, DC. Image courtesy of the Smithsonian Institution. In 1907, when Hunter was about twenty, she gave birth to her first child with Charles Dupree, a mechanic fifteen years her senior with whom she had two children. Hunter and Dupree never married, and he died in 1914. Ten years later, Clementine married Emmanuel Hunter, a woodchopper at the plantation. Together, they would have five children, two of which were stillborn, while living in a worker’s cabin at Melrose. Until her marriage to Emmanuel, Clementine spoke only Creole French; he taught her American English. Hunter worked in the fields at Melrose until her thirties when, in the late 1920s, Carmelite Henry, the wife of John Hampton Henry, employed her to do domestic work as a cook and housekeeper at the “Big House.” After John Hampton Henry died in 1917, his widow opened her home to writers and artists, hosting them for extended stays to live and work, and turning Melrose into an art colony–surely, a development that must have influenced Hunter. Clementine Hunter, Melrose Plantation, Louisiana, 1948. Photo by Carlotta M. Copron. Gelatin silver print, 12⅜ by 9⅞ in. New Orleans Museum of Art, New Orleans, Louisiana. Image courtesy of the New Orleans Museum of Art. Painting Career Prior to painting, Hunter expressed her creativity through fine sewing, doll making, producing textiles, and quilting which she continued throughout her life such as in her Melrose Quilt (ca. 1960). The Henry family had purchased Melrose in 1899, and began restoring architectural structures on the grounds and moving historic log cabins from the area onto the property. Melrose Quilt portrays several notable buildings on the plantation including the Big House (center) where the Henrys lived, Yucca House (top), Ghana House (bottom left), and African House (bottom right), where in 1955 at the age of sixty-eight Hunter would paint her well known mural of plantation life. Clementine Hunter (ca. 1886-1988), Detail of mural inside African House. Melrose Plantation, Natchitoches Parish, Louisiana. Image courtesy of South Writ Large. Clementine Hunter (ca.1886-1988), Melrose Quilt, ca. 1960. Fabric, 73 x 60 in. Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington, DC. Image courtesy of the Smithsonian American Art Museum. Hunter began to paint at some point in the late 1930s. In 1945, using discarded tubes of oils left at Melrose by the New Orleans artist Alberta Kinsey and an old window shade, Hunter is said to have created her first “real” painting known as Panorama of Baptism on Cane River. Hunter did not title her paintings. When asked for a title, she would provide a description or explanation. Her paintings can be seen as a record of her experiences growing up, living, and working on a plantation the majority of her life. Clementine Hunter (ca. 1886-1988), Panorama of Baptism on Cane River, 1945. Oil on window shade. Gift of the Roger H. Ogden Collection. Image courtesy of the Ogden Museum of Southern Art, New Orleans, Louisiana. In the beginning she painted using readily available materials such as house paint on cardboard, paper bags, scrap wood, snuff boxes, cutting boards, wine bottles, and milk jugs before moving on to the more conventional materials of oil and watercolors on canvas to create images of Southern living and religious traditions such as Baptism (ca.1950) and Funeral at St. Augustine’s (early 1970s), depicting the local Catholic church. Her reminiscences are colorful and direct yet lyrical, her honesty refreshing and poignant. Clementine Hunter (ca. 1886-1988), Baptism, ca. 1950. Oil on board, 15 ½  x 19 ½ in. The Melvin Holmes Collection of African American Art, San Francisco, California. Image courtesy of The Melvin Homes Collection of African American Art. Clementine Hunter (1887-1988), Funeral at St. Augustine, early 1970s. 17½ x 23¼ in. Estimate: $4,000-6,000. Offered in Outsider Art on February 3, 2022 at Christie’s in New York. Image courtesy of Christie’s. In 1939, the French writer François Mignon (1899-1980), curator of the plantation, noticed her talent and gave her paints and materials. Originally from New York, Mignon became Hunter’s friend and helped promote her work for three decades. He arranged for her paintings to be displayed at a local drugstore where they sold for a dollar each. He also co-authored a cookbook with her on traditional Creole cuisine, the Melrose Plantation Cookbook (1956), that featured photographs of Melrose Plantation with illustrations by Hunter. Clementine Hunter at left with Melrose Plantation curator Francois Mignon in an undated photo. Image courtesy of The Shreveport Times, Shreveport, Louisiana. James Register, a Melrose visitor and professor at the University of Oklahoma, also gave Hunter art supplies and support. He helped her learn to sign her paintings. She began signing with a straightforward “CH” from the mid-1940s into the 1950s as can be seen on the delightful Fishing from 1956. The signature developed further into a stylized backwards “C” overlapping an “H” as on the happy flowers picture Pinwheels (Spider Lilies, 1960s). After the death of her husband, Hunter was left to work full-time and care for her children alone while painting at night. She put a sign on the outside of her cabin that read,  "Clementine Hunter, Artist. 25 cents to Look.” It was through Register’s efforts that Hunter received a Julius Rosenwald Foundation grant for African American visual artists in 1944. Clementine Hunter (ca. 1886-1988), Fishing, 1956. Oil on board, 17¼ x 23½ in. Estimate: $5,000-7,000. Offered in Outsider Art on February 3, 2022 at Christie’s in New York. Image courtesy of Christie’s. Clementine Hunter (ca. 1886-1988), Pinwheels (Spider Lilies), 1960s. Oil on canvas, 30 x 24 in. Gilley’s Gallery, Baton Rouge, Louisiana. Image courtesy of Gilley’s Gallery. Both Mignon and Register are credited with encouraging Hunter’s talent and setting her on the path toward recognition. With their support, her first shows were in 1945 in Brownwood, Rosenwald Grant, and Waco, Texas. An exhibition of Hunter's paintings at the New Orleans Arts and Crafts Show in 1949 brought even wider attention to her work. And a June 16, 1953, article in Look magazine entitled “Innocence Regained” featuring Hunter in her cabin at Melrose surrounded by her paintings brought her to national prominence. She became the first African American artist to receive a solo exhibition at the Delgado Museum (now the New Orleans Museum of Art) in 1956.  Recognizing the growing interest in her work, Hunter took charge of her image and success. She mounted pay-to-see exhibitions at her home, charged visitors to take pictures with her for 50 cents apiece, sold her work (for modest prices), and even created the occasional self-portrait, such as 1981’s Untitled–a modest acknowledgement of her growing acclaim. Clementine Hunter (ca. 1886-1988), Untitled, 1981. Oil and collage on canvas board, 14 x 18 in. National Museum of Women in the Arts, Washington, DC. Image courtesy of the National Museum of Women in the Arts. She also produced many astonishingly modern takes on her subject matter such as the portrait Grandpa (ca. 1960) and the aforementioned Grandmother’s Garden (1962). Clementine Hunter (ca. 1886-1988), Grandpa, ca. 1960. Oil on masonite, 17 x 21 in. Image courtesy of Pinterest. Death and Forgery Self-taught, most often painting what she remembered in an “idiosyncratic artistic style”–brightly colored, simply rendered without scale, perspective, shadow–her work is the epitome of folk art yet, her sensibility is not just nostalgic. By the time of her death at age 101 on January 1, 1988, Hunter had become widely known. Eminent institutions such as the Los Angeles County Museum of Art and the Museum of American Folk Art in New York had mounted exhibitions. But forgeries of her work had begun circulating throughout the country. With the help of Thomas Whitehead, who had been a personal friend of Hunter’s and was a Clementine Hunter art expert, the FBI finally caught those responsible in 2009.  It was the first FBI case of its kind, it legitimized folk art and protected Hunter’s legacy. Today, Clementine Hunter’s works sell for thousands of dollars at auction and are in many private and public collections, including that of Oprah Winfrey and the late Joan Rivers as well as the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, DC and the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. Her life and art have been the subject of books, and her paintings were featured on a 2013 episode of PBS’s Antiques Roadshow. That same year, Robert Wilson, who had met Hunter when he was twelve years old, premiered his opera entitled “Zinnias: The Life of Clementine Hunter” at Montclair State University in New Jersey. Common in the South, zinnias were one of Hunter’s favorite flowers and she painted the stately blooms many times throughout her career. Clementine Hunter (ca. 1886-1988), Zinnias in a Pot, 1965. Oil on board, 32 x 28 in. Savannah College of Art and Design Museum of Art, Savannah, Georgia. Image courtesy of the Savannah College of Art and Design Museum of Art.

by Emily Burkhart February 29, 2024 Emily Mason (1932-2019), Pleasure Garden, 1970. Oil on canvas, 52 x 44 in. Miles McEnery Gallery, New York. Image courtesy of Artsy. During a career spanning more than six decades, the American painter and printmaker Emily Mason (1932-2019) explored abstraction in works that combined vibrant color with gestural expression. Saturating the canvas with intense hues and bold tones, she created color-centric abstract compositions. Her paintings bridged Abstract Expressionism, Lyrical Abstraction, and the Color Field movements. She exhibited both nationally and internationally beginning in the 1960s. In 1979, she was selected for a Ranger Fund Purchase Prize by the National Academy of Design. Mason described her process as “want[ing] to use the medium as directly as possible.”  She explained: Using paint and its inherent qualities–brilliance, transparency, opacity, liquidity, weight, warmth, and coolness–enables me to get my mind out of the way. These qualities guide me in a process of discovery which will determine the climate of the picture and define spatial relationships. While this approach results in certain kinds of places, I cannot name them but know instinctively when they appear. Mason’s singular vision, often independent of the major art movements of the time, set her apart from her contemporaries. This along with her gender and a quieter lifestyle, may explain why she is not better known today. Emily Mason in her Chelsea, New York, studio, 1991. Photograph by Tommy Naess. Image courtesy of The Brooklyn Rail. Early Life and Education Emily Mason was born in Greenwich Village, New York City, on January 12, 1932, to Warwood Edwin Mason, a sea captain for American Export Lines, and Alice Trumbull Mason. Mason’s mother was a writer, poet, and pioneering abstractionist herself, as well as a founder of the artist organization American Abstract Artists, a predecessor to the New York School and Abstract Expressionism. Through her mother and her mother’s artist friends such as Elaine de Kooning and Joseph Albers, Mason developed an early interest in art and Modernism. After graduating from New York’s High School of Music & Art (now Fiorello H. LaGuardia High School of Music and Performing Arts), Mason studied fine art at Bennington College, a private liberal arts school in Bennington,Vermont, from 1950-1952. She transferred to The Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art in New York City to complete her degree in 1955. In 1956, Mason was awarded a prestigious Fulbright scholarship for painting and spent two years in study at the Accademia di Belle Arti in Venice, Italy. While in Italy, Mason was inspired by the country’s Byzantine-era architecture and began creating Color Field-style paintings. Upon returning home, her work garnered increasing recognition, taking off in the 1960s with her first solo exhibition at New York City’s Area Gallery in 1960. Family Prior to her move to Italy in 1956, Mason met the German-born American Realist/Color Field painter Wolf Khan (1927-2020). He joined her in Italy and on March 2,1957, they married in Venice. When Mason earned a second year of the Fulbright grant, it enabled the newlyweds to divide their time between Venice and Rome. The couple returned to New York in late 1958 where Mason gave birth to their daughter Cecily in 1959. In 1963, the family returned to Italy where their younger daughter Melany was born in 1964. Cecily later became an abstract artist in her own right and is a member of American Abstract Artists while her sister Melany is a social worker and children’s book author. Emily Mason and Wolf Khan were married for 62 years until her death in 2019. Emily Mason working in her Chelsea studio in front of her painting Up River, 2016. Photograph by Steven Rose. Image courtesy of Wikimedia Commons. Artistic Practice For much of her working life, Mason split her time between a studio in a converted loft in the Chelsea neighborhood of Manhattan that she purchased in 1979 and an old blacksmith’s lodge on a farm in Wisconsin that she and her husband acquired in 1968. In a 2018 interview with Western Art & Architecture magazine, Mason explained the value of the two locations, saying that: "It is important to balance city life with experiencing nature. Winter in the city is the time for the fermentation of ideas. Summer is my time to carry them out.” Emily Mason in her Brattleboro, Vermont, studio, 2018. Photograph by Joshua Farr. Image courtesy of Art Loves Company. Mason’s work has been categorized as Lyrical Abstraction, or art that expresses the artist’s emotions by conveying a sense of the spiritual outlook an artist chooses to infuse into their paintings through a desire to communicate concepts, thoughts, ideas, and emotions abstractly. Her paintings are also characterized by the use of “analogous” color theory, groups of three colors adjacent to each other on the color wheel with similarities composed of one dominant color, such as yellow-orange, yellow, and yellow-green, or red-orange, red, and red-violet. She often incorporated elements of Color Field painting as well with broad areas of paint on her canvases. Her painting technique was described as starting with empty pet food cans into which: [S]he mixed pigments and solvents to specific and varied consistencies, then poured them directly onto the canvas in a curious interplay with her painting’s other “pours.” Crucial to the overall process was the time (or sometimes, the lack thereof) elapsed between these poured layers. Often, Mason would gesturally spread out the poured paint layer with a paintbrush (the one she had used to mix that tin), or apply other physical treatments such as scraping, sanding, finger painting, or contact with an unconventional tool such as an old t-shirt. The following several paintings serve as an introduction to Mason’s work. Lignite (1968) Emily Mason (1932-2019), Lignite, 1968. Oil on canvas, 50 x 41 in. Miles McEnery Gallery, New York. Image courtesy of 1stDibs. Lignite (1968) takes its name from a soft combustible sedimentary rock called lignite formed from naturally compressed peat, often referred to as brown coal. Mason composed the painting she entitled Lignite primarily of the complementary hues of blue and yellow-orange. Where these pigments blend, a brownish tone emerges with additional hints of yellow and green. Violet appears on the right side of the canvas where layers of blue and red have also been applied and mingled. Faint wisps and horizontal streaks of blue mark the left section of the canvas as well, some made by the horizontal dripping of paint. The canvas emits an overall glow, so it certainly could be said to be titled in recognition of lignite burning. Pleasure Garden (1970) Emily Mason (1932-2019), Pleasure Garden, 1970. Oil on canvas, 52 x 44 in. Miles McEnery Gallery, New York. Image courtesy of Artsy. Pleasure Garden (1970), one of Mason’s best-known works, consists of overlapping patches and blocks of color. Cheerful yellows dominate this happy composition while bright oranges, deep red, violet, blue, and green add to the mix. Red, yellow-green, and blue have all been dripped down the canvas, and the blue has been splashed as well as dripped, also contributing to a sense of movement are circular swatches of the same bright blue that look to be dropped onto complementary orange at the lower left. Defiant of a Road (1972) Emily Mason (1932-2019), Defiant of a Road, 1972. Oil on canvas, 52 ¼ x 40 ¼ in. Miles McEnery Gallery, New York. Image courtesy of Artsy 1972’s Defiant of a Road takes its name from a line in the “The Moon upon her Fluent Route” (1852), a poem by Emily Dickinson (1830-1886) who happened to be both Mason’s namesake and favorite poet. Against the background of an aqua wash, Mason has poured, mixed, and splashed bluish-purple, lavender, pink, and buff, on top of which are strokes of blue, orange, pale yellow, and bright green. Whether or not evoking the moon, stars, and dawn as does Dickinson’s poem, the painting does aptly reflect the words “defiant of a road.” It is an exercise in the aesthetic properties of color and the validity of abstraction. A Paper of Pins (1974) Emily Mason (1932-2019), A Paper of Pins, 1974. Oil on canvas, 52 1/4 x 44 1/4 in. Miles McEnery Gallery, New York. Image courtesy of Artsy. A Paper of Pins (1974) consists of irregularly-edged square and rectangular swatches of color juxtaposed against a dreamy background wash of soft green, pale yellow, and light blue. Water markings on the canvas form translucent dark-edged bands that seem depictive, in one area approximating a large paper clip or safety pin. A similar outline extends down from the first, disappearing behind a purple square at the bottom right. The painting mysteriously borders on the representational. The Thunder Hurried Slow (1978) Emily Mason (1932-2019), The Thunder Hurried Slow, 1978. Oil on canvas, 54 x 54 in. Miles McEnery Gallery, New York. Image courtesy of Artsy. Another painting, The Thunder Hurried Slow (1978), also takes its name from a line in an Emily Dickinson poem. Here, it is from the poem “A Thunderstorm” (1864). Splotches of brilliant blue and purple, reminiscent of storm clouds, hover toward the center of the picture while drips of paint fall like rain. A sheer veil of white mixed with soft yellow and pink crosses the bluish-purple patch like fog or wind. Accents of red are strewn about while elsewhere magenta, yellow, and green border the ”storm.” Death and Last Exhibitions At the age of 87, Emily Mason died of cancer at her home in Vermont on December 10, 2019, coincidentally the birth date of her namesake Emily Dickinson. She left behind her two daughters, four grandchildren, and her husband who survived her by only a few months. Mason enjoyed a final exhibition in the year of her death from January 3 to February 2, 2019 at the Miles McEnery Gallery (MMG) in New York City. Two years later, in 2021, the MMG (which represents Mason’s estate) mounted the first posthumous retrospective featuring twenty-two paintings made between the late 1970s and the mid-1990s in an exhibition entitled Emily Mason: Chelsea Paintings. Her work again recently featured at the gallery from December 14, 2023, to February 3, 2024, in a show focusing on earlier pieces, and taking its name from one of her paintings, called The Thunder Hurried Slow: Emily Mason Paintings, 1968-1979. Emily Mason with some of her prints and paintings in her Chelsea studio in 2015. Photograph by Gavin Ashworth. Image courtesy of Elle Decor. Legacy Today, Emily Mason is considered among the finest American abstract painters. She is admired for the “exquisite sensitivity to color, balance, and form” with which she imbued her compositions. She approached each of her paintings on its own terms, comparing her process to a game of chess or a musical composition. As she described it,  “One more move, like chess—a musical conversation—violin, cello. Pick it up, make a move—wait—let time go in between. Then I know what to do.”  Both the urban and natural environments of New York and Vermont, respectively, shaped her body of work, as did the plane of the canvas and the physicality and colors of the paint. Her work resides in private collections, the Rutgers Archive in New Jersey, LewAllen Galleries in New Mexico, and the National Academy Museum in New York among others. In addition to making art, Mason was a devoted educator. For thirty years she taught painting at the City University of New York (CUNY) Hunter College. Mason’s daughters Cecily and Melany Kahn serve on the board of the Emily Mason | Alice Trumbull Mason Foundation, a not-for-profit foundation that Emily Mason established in 2018 as the Alice Trumbull Mason Foundation to support the legacy of her mother and to advance opportunities  to traditionally under-represented artists. After her death, the foundation was renamed the Emily Mason | Alice Trumbull Mason Foundation to honor both women. Emily Mason in her New York City studio, 1991. Photograph by Tommy Naess. Image courtesy of the Emily Mason | Alice Trumbull Mason Foundation.

By Emily Burkhart January 29, 2024 Albrecht Dürer (German, Nuremberg 1471-1528 Nuremberg), Melencolia I, 1514. Copper engraving, plate 9 3/8 x 7 5/16 in. Minneapolis Institute of Arts, Minneapolis, Minnesota. Image courtesy of the  Minneapolis Institute of Arts. Deep depression, intense sadness, melancholy, whatever name used, it takes many forms–psychological, intellectual, artistic. Since Classical times, melancholia has often referred to the latter, the lack of a muse with said muse personified by a goddess (originating from the nine Muses, daughters of Zeus, in Greek mythology) or, more recently, that of a female model for inspiration. So with a “melancholic” mind, I have decided to switch gears and my focus on women artists to write about the personification of melancholy in one of my favorite works of art, the allegorical engraving, Melencolia I (1514) in which the great German Renaissance painter and printmaker Albrecht Dürer portrayed melancholy. Albrecht Dürer (1471-1528), Self-portrait at 26, 1498. Museo del Prado, Madrid, Spain. Oil on wood panel, 20 in. x 16 in. Image courtesy of Wikimedia Commons. Context Melencolia I is one of the three small engravings known collectively as Dürer’s Meisterstiche (master prints). The other two are Knight, Death, and the Devil (1513) and Saint Gerome in His Study (1514). While the three are not a series, they correspond to the three kinds of virtue in medieval scholasticism–moral, theological, and intellectual–and embody the complexity of Durer’s thought and that of his age. Melencolia I thus represents the melancholy of the creative artist and is often considered autobiographical. Background From the time of the ancient Greeks through the Middle Ages, every individual was thought to be dominated by one of four bodily humors–blood, yellow bile, black bile, and phlegm. These four humors were understood to define physical and mental health, and determine personality, as well. Carried by the bloodstream, it was believed that the four humors bred the passions of anger, grief, hope, and fear. Black bile, also known as melancholy, was the least desirable of the four humors. Alleged to suffer from an excess of black bile, melancholics were thought to be especially prone to insanity. However, Renaissance thought also linked melancholy with creative genius, a trait exclusive to male artists, thus changing the status of this humor and making the artist aware that his gift came with a price. Albrecht Dürer (German, Nuremberg 1471-1528 Nuremberg), Melencolia I, 1514. Copper engraving, plate 9 3/8 x 7 5/16 in. Minneapolis Institute of Arts, Minneapolis, Minnesota. Image courtesy of the Minneapolis Institute of Arts. Iconography Melencolia I has been linked by scholars to alchemy, astrology, geometry, mythology, numerology, philosophy, and theology to name some of the disciplines (and pseudosciences) associated with this densely laden work. A winged female figure wearing a leafy wreath and assumed to represent Melancholy sits on a ledge abutting the wall of a building. She stares pensively. Her pose–head resting on her left hand–is a common visual depiction of the mental state of melancholy. In her right hand on top of a book on her lap, she holds a caliper, an instrument resembling a compass used to measure the distance between two opposite sides of an object. As a measuring device, a caliper is an architect’s tool and symbolizes God as the architect of the universe. Used to draw circles, the caliper also represents eternity or the realm of the spiritual. Melancholy is surrounded by other tools associated with geometry, one of the seven liberal arts that underlie artistic creation and the one through which Dürer hoped to achieve perfection in his own work. A set of keys dangle from a belt at her waist symbolizing knowledge and success. Below those, a heavy coin purse rests against her voluminous skirt, a symbol of fortune, prosperity, and luck. Toward the center of the image, a putto (a young boy also with wings) sits atop a millstone, which represents difficult work or tasks. His eyes focused downward, his brow furrowed in concentration, he writes upon a tablet. In some interpretations, he is characterized as sleeping, imbued with innocence, beauty, and peace. A scrawny hound lies curled up on the ground between a sphere and truncated polyhedron, or, perhaps, rhombohedron (there are various analyses of the implied shape) under which is a claw hammer. In spiritual contexts, dogs are symbols of loyalty, faithfulness, and protection. In front of the sphere is a molder’s form, hand plane, and a set of pincers at Melancholy’s feet. Various other carpentry tools in the form of nails, a saw, and straight edge are also strewn on the ground. These are implements of creation symbolizing judgment and discernment. On the left side of the dog is a censer, or portable inkwell, with a pen holder attachment, items associated with knowledge, authority, and creativity in art. In the bottom right-hand corner by the nails, is a tool that has been interpreted as either the nozzle of a bellows or syringe. Above these and below the ledge upon which Melancholy sits, Dürer signed the work with his architecturally stylized AD monogram and the date, 1514. In the background, behind the dog, are further implements of creation–a brazier with a goldsmith’s crucible and a pair of tongs. A tall ladder leans against the side of the building. Nearby a nail supports a balance, another a half-full hourglass (at once a symbol of death and the passage of time, and, when turned over, of rebirth and new beginnings). A bell, also symbolic of beginnings and endings, hangs close by, its pull rope extending out of the frame. Both the ladder and building also continue out of the frame and also may symbolize the connection between heaven and earth, beginnings and endings. Beneath the bell a “magic square” is inscribed on the wall. This is a larger square subdivided into smaller ones. The smaller squares each contain a number so that each vertical, horizontal, and diagonal row adds up to the same total. Here, the rows add up to 34 which is one of the numbers associated with Jupiter in Western Occult Tradition. It signifies new beginnings, balance, and abundance as well as the optimism of planet Jupiter warding off the melancholy of Saturn. The darkness of Saturn as the furthest planet visible to the naked eye in our solar system links it to black in black bile and hence, melancholia. At the upper left of the engraving, a body of water can be seen in the distance. Barely visible between the rungs of the ladder are buildings on the shore. Above the water, light radiates from a comet, planet, or shooting star (there is no agreement) framed by a rainbow. Day and night seem to merge. A flying batlike creature with a long, undulating tail holds a banner labeled Melencolia I  announcing both the subject of the engraving and providing its name. De Occulta Philosophia, Heinrich Cornelius Agrippa von Nettesheim (1533) Theodor de Bry, Portrait of Heinrich Cornelius Agrippa, (1486-1535), 1598 engraving. Wellcome Images, United Kingdom. Image courtesy of Wikimedia Commons. It is believed that the explanation for the number “I” in the title comes from an influential 1533 treatise, called  De Occulta Philosophia, containing three volumes of occult philosophy, by Dürer’s contemporary, the German polymath and physician Heinrich Cornelius Agrippa von Nettesheim (1486-1535). Popular in Renaissance humanist circles, Agrippa classified melancholic inspiration into three ascending levels: imagination, reason, and intellect. He posited that creativity in the arts was the realm of the imagination, considered the first and lowest in the hierarchy of the three categories of genius. The next was the realm of reason and the highest the realm of spirit. Agrippa linked imagination to artistic genius, the first and lowest level, which may explain the brooding state of the central winged figure of Melancholy. Conclusion Little was written about Melencolia I until after Dürer’s death in 1528 at the age of 56. In 1568, the pioneering Italian art historian, painter, and architect Giorgio Vasari (1511-1574) included Dürer in his Lives of the Most Excellent Painters, Sculptors, and Architects. Of Dürer, he wrote: Then, having grown both in power and courage, as he saw that his works were prized, Albrecht executed some copper engravings that astonished the world. He also set himself to making an engraving, for printing on a half sheet of paper, of a figure of Melancholy, with all the instruments that reduce those who use them, or rather, all mankind, to a melancholy humor; and in this he succeeded so well that it would not be possible to do more delicate engraving with the burin [the tool used for engraving]. Melencolia I touches on the themes of  the role of the artist as creator, the relationships among the physical, intellectual, and spiritual realm; the study of the natural world; mathematics; esoteric knowledge; and self-awareness. These were all humanist topics of interest to Dürer and his contemporaries. Since Dürer’s death, Melencolia I has become one of the most frequently discussed images in the history of art and a staple of Western art history courses. Yet, because of its dependence on historical and cultural context, the full meaning of Dürer’s engraving remains an enigma, making the exquisite details of the work difficult to explicate with certainty. A degree of irony attaches to the image as we do not know if Dürer rues or celebrates the muse–or both. In any case, Melencolia I rewards close observation.

By Emily Burkhart December 24, 2023 Marisol Escobar (1930-2016), Women and Dog, 1963-1964. Wood, plaster, synthetic polymer, and taxidermied dog head. 73 9/16 x 76 ⅝ x 26 ¾ in. Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, New York. Image courtesy of the Whitney Museum of American Art. “I’ve always wanted to be free in my life and art. It’s as important to me as truth.” -Marisol Escobar The French born, Venezuelan-American multimedia artist Marisol Escobar (1930-2016), also known simply as Marisol, created her most iconic sculptural works in the late 1950s and 1960s, during the height of Abstract Expressionism and Pop Art. Although her works are often associated with Pop Art, Marisol’s sculptures were distinct from the observations on mass media and culture put forth by Pop Art friends and peers such as Roy Lichenstein and Andy Warhol. Warhol called her “the first girl artist with glamor.” Using a combination of found objects, wood, and self-portraiture, Marisol’s sculptures satirized patriarchal society, commenting on feminine identity and alienation with wit and humor. In 1968, Marisol left the New York art scene at the height of her renown and traveled the world. She returned to New York again in 1973 ready for a change. She made a series of fish sculptures and designed sets and costumes for Martha Graham and Elisa Monte among others. She was recognized for her sculptural portraits of other artists as well as of historical figures. She addressed poverty and social injustice among other issues until age and illness took their toll. Although she never regained her earlier acclaim, renewed interest in her work in the 21st century has introduced Marisol to a new generation of admirers. Marisol Escobar circa 1963; Photo courtesy of Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division, and the World Telegram & Sun; Photo by Herman Hiller. Image courtesy of the National Museum of Women in the Arts, Washington, DC. Early Life Marisol Escobar was actually born María Sol Escobar to Venezuelan parents living in Paris, France, on May 22, 1930. She adopted the common Spanish nickname Marisol in her early teens. Her parents both came from wealthy families and lived off money from oil and real estate investment. This affluence enabled them to travel around Europe, the United States, and Venezuela. The Escobars moved back to their native Venezuela around 1935 and Marisol and her older brother  spent the rest of their childhood between New York and Caracas. Marisol displayed an aptitude for drawing from a young age. As patrons of the arts themselves, her parents encouraged her talent by taking her to museums and galleries. In 1941, when Marisol was eleven, her mother, Josefina, committed suicide. Her father, Gustavo Hernandez Escobar, responded by shipping Marisol off to boarding school in Long Island, New York, for a year. Deeply traumatized by the suicide, Marisol became almost mute after her mother’s passing. An intensely religious child, she coped with her mother’s death by walking on her knees until they bled, tying ropes tightly around her waist in emulation of saints and martyrs, and keeping silent for long periods unless spoken to or for answering questions in school. As she later recalled, “I really didn’t talk for years except for what was absolutely necessary.” Education Following her exit from the Long Island boarding school, Marisol attended various schools between New York and Caracas where she was often acclaimed for her artistic ability. The family settled in Los Angeles in 1946, when Marisol was sixteen. There she began her formal arts education with night classes at the Otis Art Institute and at the Jepson Art Institute. She briefly attended the Académie Julian and the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris in 1949 before moving to New York around 1950 where she took classes at the Art Students League (1951-1963), was a student of artist Hans Hofmann (1952-1955), attended the New School for Social Research (1952), and the Brooklyn Museum Art School (1955-1957) where she became interested in Mexican, Pre-Columbian, and American folk art. She never married or had children. By the late 1950s, when she was in her twenties, Marisol dropped her surname to divest herself of a patrilineal identity and to “stand out from the crowd,” she said. She believed the single moniker would help her become more memorable as an artist. Marisol Escobar poses in 1958 in New York with her tools and some of her wooden sculptures, including The Large Family Group (1957). Walter Sanders/Time & Life Pictures/Getty Images. Image courtesy of The Boston Globe. Artistic Practice Marisol began her career as a painter and was strongly influenced by Abstract Expressionism, befriending artists such as Willem de Kooning, with whom she had an affair. Her practice combined folk art, dada, and surrealism, illustrating a keen insight into contemporary life. After seeing pre-Columbian art in Mexico while visiting her father and in a New York gallery show in the early 1950s, Marisol began making sculpture in 1954. Initially, she worked in terra-cotta and wood on a small scale using the lost-wax method of casting in bronze. Within a few years, she began focusing on life-size figures and mixed-media assemblages, combining wood with painting and found objects such as in 1957’s The Large Family Group. By 1961-1962, she was concentrating her work on three-dimensional wooden sculptural representations of society types often featuring self-portraiture using inspiration “found in photographs or gleaned from personal memories'' in works including Self-Portrait (1961-1962), The Family (1962), The Family (1963), Women and Dog (1963-1964), La visita (The Visit 1964) and The Party (1965-1966). Marisol explained, “In the beginning, I drew on a piece of wood because I was going to carve it, and then I noticed that I didn’t have to carve it, because it looked as if it was carved already.” Her first New York art exhibition was at the Stable Gallery in 1962. By 1966, Marisol’s work exclusively featured women with her own visage as subjects. Some Sculptural Works The Large Family Group (1957) Marisol Escobar (1930-2016), The Large Family Group, 1957. Painted wood, 37 x 38 x 6 1/2 in. National Museum of Women in the Arts, Washington, DC. Photo by Lee Stalsworth. Image courtesy of the National Museum of Women in the Arts. The Large Family Group (1957), one of Marisol’s earliest works in wood, reflects the influence of pre-Columbian, American Folk Art, and Cubism on her practice. A family of five stands together with eye popping expressions. The young boy and one of the adults have arms outstretched seeming to invite viewers into their personal space. Formerly in the collection of the Corcoran Gallery of Art in Washington, DC, the National Museum of Women in the Arts acquired the piece in 2018. After creating The Large Family Group, Marisol left New York for Rome where she stayed for more than a year. Upon her return, she became associated with the Pop Art movement of the 1960s which enhanced her recognition and popularity. Her friendship with Andy Warhol was particularly fruitful as they were mutual admirers of each other. She made a sculptural portrait of him and appeared in two of his early Factory films, The Kiss (1963) and 13 Most Beautiful Girls (1964). Marisol Escobar (1930-2016), Andy, 1962-1963. Painted wood, plaster, and leather shoes. Dimensions unavailable. Guggenheim Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates. Image courtesy of Hyperallergic. Self-Portrait (1961-1962) Marisol Escobar (1930-2016), Self-Portrait, 1961-1962. Wood, plaster, marker, paint, graphite, human teeth, gold and plastic, 43 1/2 × 45 1/4 × 75 5/8 in. Hammer Museum, University of California, Los Angeles. Image courtesy of the Hammer Museum. Marisol’s Self-Portrait (1961-1962), now in the Hammer Museum at UCLA, is an early assemblage piece. Seven strikingly carved heads mostly without necks are arranged across a rectangular block of wood. Two breasts and six bare legs protrude from the front of the piece. Though the work is identified as a self–portrait, only three of the heads bear a positive likeness to Marisol, who often included plaster casts of her own body parts in her work. The other four heads are defined by varying degrees of realism and caricature. Interestingly, Marisol only included two arms, which are drawn on the work rather than sculpted. One arm colored brown covers the heart of the head on the far left while the other is merely an outline on one of the figures, extending downward from a shoulder perhaps. Yellow and dark blue paint covers half the sculpture while the rest remains largely natural wood. Five of the legs are extended toward the viewer with the sixth bent at the knee. Of the six legs, five have bare feet that are plaster casts of Marisol’s own feet (though one is missing a toe) while the sixth leg wears a painted-on black shoe. The Family (1962) Marisol Escobar (1930-2016), The Family, 1962. Paint and graphite on wood, sneakers, tinted plaster, door knob and plate, three sections. The Museum of Modern Art, Manhattan, NY. Image courtesy of The Worley Gig. The Family (1962) is based on an old black and white photograph (below) of a family that Marisol found. As with her other work, the sculpture consists of blocks of wood combining painting and figurative drawing with found objects. Here, the objects include an old door and several pairs of well-worn shoes on the feet of the family members. Marisol has translated the print of the mother’s dress into color from the black and white photo interpreting it in a cheerful rose on beige, the son’s denim overalls become vivid blue, while the daughters’ light-colored dresses become cream. The baby wears a bright white shirt and pants. Unlike her four children, the mother has plaster hands. The family in the photo pose against a closely patterned background, a drape or wallpaper, that Marisol has exploded. Each of her family members are painted on individual wooden panels. With the exception of the baby, these are arrayed against a large French door thus individuating them even as the infant’s board is held by the mother. Additional wood creates the illusion of the legs of a chair that the mother is sitting upon. Although the family’s worn clothes and shoes indicate meager circumstances in the photo, Marisol suggests a bright outlook for them as she faithfully “translate[s] their dignity and charisma” into her ensemble. Image courtesy of The Worley Gig. The Family (1963) Marisol Escobar (1930-2016), The Family, 1963. Wood, metal, graphite, textiles, paint, shoes, plaster and baby carriage. 79 1/2 x 63 x 73 in. Currier Museum of Art, Manchester, New Hampshire. Image courtesy of Artnet News. In another piece also entitled The Family (1963), Marisol satirizes the ideal American family of the 1960s in a multi-figure, free-standing sculpture. A stylish mother pushes a pram wearing white gloves, pumps, and a blue polka dotted on orange painted wooden dress with breasts protruding. She smiles foolishly beneath a tall crowned, small brimmed hat pulled down over her eyes, thus blinding and distracting her from attending to the four children that surround her and literally boxing her in. She seems oblivious to both the daughters flanking her and to the children in the carriage. The standing young girls gaze straight ahead; the one in a red dress clutches a doll with Marisol’s face drawn on it. The father and husband, the male head of the household, stares directly at the viewer, wearing a tweed sports coat, white shirt, and red tie. He is flattened, encased within a wooden panel. He is the only figure not given three-dimensionality. He is attached to the wall which physically isolates him from the others. In 1963, the Museum of Modern Art in New York included several of Marisol’s sculptures in Americans, a group exhibition designed to highlight relatively unknown, but promising artists. Marisol was exhibited alongside such internationally recognized peers as Richard Anuszkiewicz, Lee Bontecou, Claes Oldenberg, and James Rosenquist. In 1970, Time magazine featured The Family on its cover to illustrate “The U.S. Family: Help!,” an article that lamented the demise of traditional family structures and shifting gender roles in contemporary America. Women and Dog (1963-1964) Marisol Escobar (1930-2016), Women and Dog, 1963-1964. Wood, plaster, synthetic polymer, and taxidermied dog head. 73 9/16 x 76 ⅝ x 26 ¾ in. Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, New York. Image courtesy of the Whitney Museum of American Art. Marisol mimicked the role of femininity as a feminist tactic in her sculptural grouping Women and Dog, produced between 1963 and 1964. One of her most well-known works, Women and Dog depicts three fashionably dressed women and a young girl along with a wooden-bodied dog sporting a collar and an actual taxidermied canine head–a disconcerting and macabre detail.  Equal parts painting, collage, carving, and assemblage, Women and Dog reflects the fascination with everyday life that was fundamental to Pop Art. Two of the women are self-portraits containing multiple plaster casts of Marisol’s face while the middle figure has a small picture of Marisol glued onto it. The child is believed to be a self-portrait as well, suggesting a fluid inhabitation of different female roles and identities. Though the composition may be ambiguous, Marisol has presented the three women walking with the child and dog as objects on display, revealing her interest in social norms and conventions relating to women in society. La visita (The Visit 1964) Marisol Escobar (1930-2016), La visita (The Visit), 1964. Painted wood and diverse materials, 59 × 88 in. Museum Ludwig, Cologne, Germany. Photograph: Rheinisches Bildarchiv Köln/Britta Schlier. Image courtesy of Frieze magazine. Another sculptural group also incorporating three women and a child, La visita (The Visit 1964) consists of three women seated on a red painted wooden sofa with a little girl on a matching ottoman sitting next to them innocently holding a painted apple. “Marisol” sits among them on the right, a plaster cast of her face and hands gives her away. She has draped the wooden representation of herself in her own coat, shoes, and handbag. A cowboy hat perches on the oversized head of the figure on the left. Its face is a photographic image of Marisol. A large wooden keg forms its torso and it wears only one shoe. Who the middle figure sporting a yellow hair bow, white shoes, and exposed plaster breasts may be is less clear. The child in the blue dress on the far right might also be another representation of Marisol. The incongruous figures sit primly in a row. They  are self-contained, do not touch or interact. The little girl holding the apple in offering is the only figure in the otherwise static composition who is at all animated. It is interesting to note that apart from the child, the women lack arms; yet, they all have hands that are plaster casts of Marisol’s own. The Party (1965-1966) Marisol Escobar (1930-2016), The Party, 1965-1966. Assemblage of fifteen freestanding, life-size figures and three wall panels, with painted wood and carved wood, mirrors, plastic, television set, clothes, shoes, glasses, and other accessories. Variable dimensions. Toledo Museum of Art, Toledo, Ohio. Photograph by Steven Zucker. Image courtesy of Flickr. Another of Marisol’s most iconic works, The Party (1965-1966), also known as The Cocktail Party, made its public debut at the Sidney Janis Gallery in 1966. This assemblage comprises fifteen life-size figures composed of shallow wooden boxes, carved and painted surfaces, plaster casts, found objects and articles of Marisol’s own clothing all arranged in a tableaux. One figure sports a miniature television set for eyes. Thirteen appear to be guests and two waitstaff, as evidenced by the trays of wine glasses the latter hold. Apart from one man in a tuxedo, the figures are all women in Marisol’s likeness, the majority of which have either plaster casts or photographs of Marisol’s face. A sense of alienation and ennui pervades the scene.The figures seem indifferent to each other as Marisol has placed them mostly facing forward and apart. A single figure on the left surveys the scene, as though contemplating the self-absorption of the others. Marisol explained the repeated use of her own image in much of her early works in a 1989 interview with Paul Gardner of ARTnews: "I did a lot of self-portraits then [1960s] because it was a time of searching for one’s identity. I looked at my faces, all different in wood, and asked, Who am I?" In 1968, Marisol was invited to exhibit The Party at the 34th annual Venice Biennale representing Venezuela. It also appeared at the influential Documenta exhibition in West Germany. Alice Neel (1900-1984), Marisol, 1981. Oil on canvas, 39 3/4 x 25 7/8 in. Honolulu Museum of Art, Honolulu, Hawaii. Image courtesy of the Honolulu Museum of Art. Marisol reluctantly sat for an exquisite portrait by her friend the painter Alice Neel. Late Career and Death Marisol continued to make art, including paintings, prints, and works on paper in addition to sculpture until near the end of her life. She never again achieved the early renown that she had experienced in the late 1950s and 1960s. Career retrospectives in the 21st century, including a major show organized by the Memphis Brooks Museum of Art in 2014 and at the Museo Del Barrio in New York City, which became her first solo show, revived interest in her work. She died in 2016 from complications of Alzheimer’s disease and pneumonia at the age of 85. A year after her death, it was announced that Marisol had bequeathed her entire estate to the Buffalo AKG Art Museum (formerly known as the Albert-Knox Art Gallery) in Buffalo, New York, which became the first museum to acquire works by Marisol—The Generals (1961–62) in 1962 and Baby Girl (1963) in 1964. In addition to the Buffalo AKG Art Museum, works by Marisol are in the permanent collections of the Pérez Art Museum Miami, the Yale University Art Gallery, The Metropolitan Museum of Art,  the Institute of Contemporary Art (ICA) Boston, and the Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen in Rotterdam, Netherlands, among many others. In 2022, the Pérez Art Museum Miami presented an exhibition featuring Marisol and Andy Warhol’s work side by side. Entitled Marisol and Warhol Take New York, the exhibition explored the rising careers of both artists in the 1960s and their influence on each other with an accompanying catalog. The Buffalo AKG Art Museum organized the largest retrospective of Marisol’s work to date for the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts (October 7, 2023–January 21, 2024), the Toledo Museum of Art (March–June 2024), the Buffalo AKG Art Museum (July 12, 2024 - January 6, 2025), and the Dallas Museum of Art (February 23–July 6, 2025). Legacy Through a parody of women and fashion, Marisol attempted to provoke social change. The art historian Holly Williams asserts that Marisol’s sculptural works toyed with the prescribed social roles and restraints faced by women during the postwar period through her depiction of the complexities of femininity as a perceived truth. By displaying the essential aspects of femininity using an assemblage of plaster casts, wooden blocks, woodcarving, drawings, photography, paint, and pieces of contemporary clothing, Marisol was able to comment on the social construct of "woman" as an unstable entity, a female identity that was most commonly determined by the male onlooker, as either mother, seductress, or partner. By juxtaposing different signifiers of femininity, Marisol explained the ways in which "femininity" is culturally produced. Using a feminist technique, Marisol disrupted the patriarchal values of society through forms of mimicry, imitation, and exaggeration in her work.

by Emily Burkhart November 20, 2023 Millard H. Sharp, Adult Female Wild Turkey (Meleagris gallopavo), uploaded August 3, 2017. Photograph, dimensions unavailable. Image courtesy of Fine Art America. In honor of Thanksgiving, I thought it might be fun to look at a few pictures of turkeys and post some reflections on the holiday itself. I wish everyone a memorable Thanksgiving full of family, friends, and good food. 1. “If there’s one thing I’ve learned over the eons, it’s that you can’t give up on your family, no matter how tempting they make it.” -Rick Riordan Robert Havell (1792/1793-1878), Family of Turkeys, ca. 1835. Oil on canvas, 42 x 59 in. Natural History Museum, London, UK. Image courtesy of the Natural History Museum. 2. “Gratitude is when memory is stored in the heart and not the mind.” -Lionel Hampton Hans Droog, Wild Turkey in Missouri Woods in the Fall, uploaded May 25, 2008. Oil on canvas, 40 x 30 in. Image courtesy of Fine Art America. 3. “Drink and be thankful to the host! What seems insignificant when you have it, is important when you need it.” -Franz Grillparzer Millard H. Sharp, Adult Female Wild Turkey (Meleagris gallopavo), uploaded August 3, 2017. Photograph, dimensions unavailable. Image courtesy of Fine Art America. 4. “Thanksgiving is a time of togetherness and gratitude.” -Nigel Hamilton Wilhelm Goebel, The Suitor-Wild Turkeys, uploaded March 12, 2020. Oil painting, dimensions unavailable. Image courtesy of Fine Art America. 5.”Let us be grateful to people who make us happy; they are the charming gardeners who make our souls blossom.” -Marcel Proust Guy Crittenden, Big Poppy-Eastern Wild Turkey Gobbler, uploaded July 12, 2022. Oil painting, dimensions unavailable. Image courtesy of Fine Art America. 6. The Little Girl And The Turkey The little girl said As she asked for more: “But what is the Turkey Thankful for?” -Dorothy Aldis Amanda and Christopher Elwell, What’s Christmas?, uploaded October 19, 2012. Photograph, dimensions unavailable. Image courtesy of Fine Art America. Until next time, Happy Thanksgiving!

By Emily Burkhart October 27, 2023 Bharti Kher (b. 1969), The Skin Speaks A Language Not Its Own, 2006.Bindis on fiberglass, 55 ⅞ x 180 x 76 in. Image courtesy of MutualArt. “The bindis play with the visual aesthetic and conceptual ideas that I have been pushing for many years now: the bindi as an object of ritual (the sacred now turned secular), of conceptual clarity (as the third eye) and brazen habit.” -Bharti Kher Bharti Kher is one of India’s preeminent contemporary artists. Known especially for her sculptural work, Kher’s diverse oeuvre includes painting, installation, and photography as well. Central to her practice is the use of found materials but particularly the bindi, a traditional circular mark applied to the forehead between the eyes by Hindu women. Since 1995, when she discovered what can be described as pollywog or sperm-shaped bindis in a New Delhi marketplace, Kher has employed the bindi as an artistic medium in works such as I’ve seen an Elephant Fly (2002), It’s a Jungle Out There (2002), The Skin Speaks A Language Not Its Own (2006), and An Absence of Assignable Cause (2007). The bindi has become one of her signature materials and adorns, often by the thousands, many of her most recognizable works. Conventionally, Hindu women wear a red bindi to signify that they are married and a black bindi if widowed. Bindis also represent the “third eye” of spiritual wisdom or divine insight. In recent years, though, the bindi has lost religious and social significance among those who have adopted it for aesthetic purposes. Indeed, bindis have become such fashionable cosmetic accessories that they are now available in a wide variety of colors and shapes. Still, as Kher explains: The application of the bindi represents an unbroken ritual practiced daily by millions of Indian women and has been described by anthropologist Marcel Mauss as “techniques of the body,” which, like other physical disciplines such as consumption and eating, are repetitive and periodic. I take it all and run with the possibility of making image and idea look beautiful and the bindis make the works feel strangely human. Bharti Kher, photo by Jeetin Sharm © Hauser & Wirth. Image courtesy of The Bristol Magazine. Kher was raised in London, England, where she was born into a Hindu family in 1969. She studied at Middlesex Polytechnic, London, from 1987-1988 and then Newcastle Polytechnic from 1988-1991, graduating with honors and receiving a Bachelor of Arts in Fine Art and Painting in 1991. The following year, she traveled to India, moving to New Delhi in 1993 at the age of 23, where she continues to live and work. She is married to the Indian artist Subodh Gupta (b. 1964) with whom she shares two children. I've seen an Elephant Fly (2002) Bharti Kher (b. 1969), I’ve seen an Elephant Fly, 2002. Acrylic, felt, and vinyl bindis on fiberglass, 72 x 43 x 20 in. Image courtesy of Artnet . Bharti Kher, I’ve Seen an Elephant Fly, 2002 (detail). Image courtesy of Plural art mag. One of Kher’s earliest sculptural pieces, I’ve seen an Elephant Fly (2002), portrays an inquisitive young elephant, standing with its trunk nearly grazing the ground. Countless silvery-gray, sperm-shaped bindi comprise the elephant’s skin making the sculpture seem a living, breathing thing. Elephants in India hold deep cultural and spiritual significance. In fact, elephants are sacred symbols of peace, mental strength, and power. The Hindu god Ganesha, said to be a remover of obstacles and a provider of fortune and good luck, is envisioned with an elephant head and a human-like body. Thus, elephants are believed to be an incarnation or representation of Ganesha. Further, Indra, god of rain, thunder, and lightning, has a white elephant as a mount, establishing elephants as a symbol of divinity and royalty. Employing the bindi on this sculpture enhances the meaning of the elephant by not only suggesting tradition but India itself, its multitudes and, of course, both feminine and masculine strength. It's a Jungle Out There (2002) Bharti Kher (b. 1969), It’s a Jungle Out There, 2002. Bindis on fiberglass, 75 and 68 in. in height. Image courtesy of theArchives of Women Artists, Research, and Exhibitions. Kher’s sculptural work entitled It’s a Jungle Out There, also from 2002, consists of two tree-like structures, one slightly taller and more narrow, the other somewhat thicker with a large rounded top. The vegetal-like growths or “trees” in It’s a Jungle Out There are covered in bindis on a largely taupe or ashen surface with patches or swirls of red, white and yellow. It is difficult to know if the two growths are thriving or struggling to live. Or, as has been suggested elsewhere, they may portray the male and female principles of life. The work seems inscrutable. The word “jungle” certainly is a metaphor for situations that are unruly or lawless, or where the only law is perceived to be survival of the fittest. Since violence and death are frequent themes in Kher’s work, perhaps the red on the “trees” may be blood, an allusion to the ecological destruction wrought by humans on rainforests and wetlands in India and across the world. The Skin Speaks A Language Not Its Own (2006) Bharti Kher (b. 1969), The Skin Speaks A Language Not Its Own, 2006. Bindis on fiberglass, 55 ⅞ x 180 x 76¾ in. Image courtesy of MutualArt. Bharti Kher (b. 1969), The Skin Speaks A Language Not Its Own, 2006 (detail). Image courtesy of Bharti Kher. In contrast to the innocence of the calf in I’ve seen an Elephant Fly, The Skin Speaks A Language Not Its Own (2006) portrays an adult elephant lying on its side. There is an air of sadness to the work. We do not know for sure if the animal is exhausted, sickened, sleeping, or dying. Its skin is also composed of multitudes of hand-applied, silvery-gray, sperm-shaped bindis, but this elephant seems to represent the darker side of the treatment of elephants in India, “the birthplace of taming elephants for the use of humans.” Captive elephants are often mistreated, stolen from their families, beaten [and] whipped into compliance to be employed in Hindu temples, religious festivals, pageants, or worked for other purposes. According to the BBC, India holds more than 4,000 elephants in captivity where they are apt to be subjected to physical abuse, fed a poor diet, and shackled to stone floors. Kher’s The Skin Speaks A Language Not Its Own may represent the suffering of India’s captive elephants. It has also been suggested that the elephant symbolizes India and, much like the dilution of meaning of the bindi itself, it represents “the potentially destructive effects of popular culture, mass media and consumerism on the culture of India.” Whatever meaning ascribed to The Skin Speaks A Language Not Its Own, it has the distinction of being the work that made Kher an internationally recognized artist. In 2013, it sold for $1,785,000 at Christie’s New York, setting an auction record price for a contemporary Indian work. An Absence of Assignable Cause (2007) Bharti Kher (b. 1969), An Absence of Assignable Cause, 2007. Bindis on fiberglass, 68¼ x 109¼ x 45¾ in. Image courtesy of Nature Morte Gallery, India. Bharti Kher (b. 1969), An Absence of Assignable Cause, 2007. Saatchi Gallery, London, 2010. Image courtesy of Flickr. In 2010, a major contemporary art exhibition at the Saatchi Gallery in London called The Empire Strikes Back: Indian Art Today featured Kher’s work. Her massive fiberglass sculpture, An Absence of Assignable Cause (2007), was one of the pieces exhibited. Unable to find anatomically correct information, Kher nevertheless depicts the imagined, life-sized appearance of the two-chambered heart of a blue-sperm whale. The surface of this sculpture is once again composed of bindis complete with undulating green and red circular bindis arranged to form blood vessels, veins and arteries. One of Kher’s inspirations is the macabre with which she combines traditional beauty while alluding to the endangered extinction status of the whale or of India, a country the size of a whale. Exhibitions And Accolades Bharti Kher has been exhibited in solo shows worldwide, including the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, Boston; the Freud Museum, London; the Vancouver Art Gallery, Canada; and the Lawrence Wilson Art Gallery, Perth, Australia. Her work has been included in numerous group exhibitions as well. Considered “one of the superstars of Indian Contemporary Art” Kher was the subject of a mid-career retrospective at the Rockbund Art Museum in Shanghai, China, in 2014. She was awarded the Chevalier dans l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres (Knight of the Order of Arts and Letters) by France in 2015 and the ARKEN Prize by Denmark in 2010. In India, she was named YFLO (Young Ficci Ladies Organization) Delhi Woman Achiever of the Year in 2007, and awarded the prestigious Sanskriti Award in Art in 2003. Kher is represented by Hauser & Wirth in New York and London and by Nature Morte in New Delhi. Photo of Bharti Kher working. Image courtesy of Archives of Women Artists, Research, and Exhibitions. If you enjoyed this article on Bharti Kher, please like and share it. To learn more about Kher’s work, visit her website here.

By Emily Burkhart September 26, 2023 Pacita Abad (1946-2004), L.A. Liberty, 1992. Acrylic, cotton yarn, plastic buttons, mirrors, gold thread, painted cloth on stitched and padded canvas, 94 x 58 in. Photo: Max McClure. Image courtesy of Artforum. I truly believe that, as an artist, I have a social responsibility for my painting, to try to make our world a little better. -Pacita Abad The work of Filipina-American artist Pacita Abad (1946-2004) combines a global sensibility with multicultural sensitivity. A political refugee who fled the dictatorship of Ferdinand Marcos as a college student in 1970, Abad was acutely aware of the plight of marginalized people, immigrants, and indigenous communities around the world. She herself was of Ivatan heritage, one of numerous, diverse ethnicities in the Philippines, a kayumanggi (Tagalog for brown-skinned), a deep caramel woman of color. Together with her husband Jack Garrity, an international development economist for the World Bank, Abad traveled the globe, learning about the art forms of the various peoples and cultures she encountered which she then incorporated into her own work. Indeed, she absorbed a diverse array of influences as she lived on five continents and visited more than 60 countries in her lifetime, including Mexico, Guatemala, India, Turkey, Afghanistan, Yemen, Sudan, Cambodia, Laos, Mali, Hong Kong, Taiwan, Papua New Guinea, and Indonesia. Abad’s painting is characterized by constant change, experimentation, and development from the 1970s right up until her death in 2004. Though she began her career as an oil painter and social realist, she is best known for the trapuntos she began creating in the 1980s, the large-scale textile paintings on unstretched canvas that she stitched and stuffed by hand to create soft fabric reliefs. She would often intricately embellish these surfaces with pieces of lace, ribbons, buttons, patterned cloth, sequins, beads, cowrie shells, and other objects producing fantastically colored and textured compositions. Pacita Abad posing with her 1996 trapunto painting, Day and Night. Image courtesy of the Archives of Women Artists, Research, and Exhibitions. Early Life in the Philippines Pacita Abad was born on October 5, 1946, in Basco, Batanes, a remote island in the South China Sea and the northernmost province of the Philippine archipelago. She was the fifth of thirteen children born to her parents Aurora Barsana Abad and Jorge Abad. Her father and other family members were involved in the Philippine resistance against the Japanese occupation of Batanes during World War II until the island’s liberation in 1945. After the Philippines attained formal independence from the United States on July 4, 1946, her father was elected as the congressman from Batanes. The family moved to Manila, the nation’s capital, from their home in Basco at the end of his first term. She attended elementary through high school in Manila, returning to Batanes every two years for her father’s re-election campaigns. In 1962, when Jorge was appointed Minister of Public Works and Communications by then President Diosdado Macapagal (1910-1997), her mother, Aurora, temporarily became the congresswoman representing Batanes and later governor of the province. Education and Political Unrest in Manila Abad entered the University of the Philippines (U.P.) in 1964 with plans to become a lawyer and go into politics and a life of public service. She graduated with a Bachelor of Arts degree in Political Science in 1968 and began graduate studies in law at U.P. in 1969 while working on her father’s congressional re-election campaign. Unfortunately, Jorge became the victim of election fraud perpetrated by the corrupt President Ferdinand Marcos (1917-1989). After organizing student demonstrations in Manila protesting the fraudulent elections in Batanes, and opposing the Marcos regime, Abad’s family was targeted and their home in Manila was sprayed with bullets. Concerned about increasing political violence and their daughter’s personal safety, Abad’s parents urged her to leave Manila and finish her law degree in Madrid, Spain. Arrival in San Francisco On her way to Spain in 1970, Abad stopped in San Francisco to visit an aunt who exposed her to the city’s vibrant counterculture. Abad then changed course and decided to remain in the United States for a time. While waiting to continue her law degree, she enrolled at Lone Mountain College, now part of the University of San Francisco, in 1971 where she studied Asian History, writing her dissertation on “Emilio Aguinaldo and the 1898 American Colonization of the Philippines,” and earning a Master’s Degree in 1972. At the same time, she became involved in Asian American political and cultural activities in the Bay Area and met her first husband, the painter George Kleiman (b. 1946) who introduced her to painting and the San Francisco art scene. Though they divorced only two years afterward, Abad met artists, musicians, and other freethinkers through Kleiman while living in an artist studio in the midst of Haight-Ashbury, the countercultural center of San Francisco, that influenced her later decision to pursue art. Jack Garrity pictured on his LinkedIn page. Image courtesy of Heavy. Meeting Jack Garrity and International Travels In 1973, after finishing her Asian History degree, Abad was offered a full scholarship to attend Boalt Law School at the University of California, Berkeley. That same year, while attending a regional World Affairs Conference in Monterrey, California, she met her future second husband Jack Garrity, a Stanford University graduate student from Boston, who would support her artistic career over their 31-year marriage. Deciding to defer law school for a year, she traveled across Asia with Garrity, hitchhiking overland from Turkey to the Philippines, passing through Iran, Afghanistan, Pakistan, India, Sri Lanka, Myanmar, Thailand, Laos, Taiwan and Hong Kong. In 1974, Abad returned home to the Philippines four years after leaving and decided to explore her native country. For two months she and Garrity traveled by bus and boat throughout the Philippine islands. These experiences fostered a lifelong admiration of traditional textiles, which Abad collected, wore, and incorporated into her artwork over the course of her life. Transition to Art and Early Works Upon her return to California in 1975, Abad decided to forgo law school altogether and to study painting. She enrolled at the Corcoran School of Art in Washington, D.C. later that year, where she concentrated on still life and figurative drawing. Her early paintings were primarily socio-political works of people and primitive masks. Social Realist oil paintings based on her global travels include Turkana Women (1979), Water of Life (1980) and Breastfeeding Mother (1981). Turkana Women (1979) Pacita Abad (1946-2004), Turkana Women, 1979. Oil on canvas, 49 x 35 in. Image Courtesy of Pacita Abad.com. One of Abad’s earliest paintings, Turkana Women (1979) portrays two women belonging to the pastoral Turkana tribe of South Sudan wearing traditional beaded neck cuffs as a herd of horses grazes in the background. The dark-skinned, bare-breasted women stand with hands on hips, appearing to be in conversation with each other. Water of Life (1980) Pacita Abad (1946-2004), Water of Life, 1980. Oil on canvas, 35 x 50 in. Image courtesy of Pacita Abad.com. Another early work, Water of Life (1980), depicts a somber scene in Cambodia. A Kampuchean woman with three children is pictured in front of a makeshift shelter at a UN refugee camp for survivors of the Cambodian Civil War (1967-1975) and genocide (1975-1979). The mother supports the head of her youngest son as he drinks from a bowl while the other two wait. Speaking about Water of Life, Abad commented: As the UNHCR [United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees] water trucks approach the camp, the Kampuchean children rush to fill their plastic pails with water. I was particularly touched, when at the corner, I saw this woman giving her son a drink from a bowl of water, while her other two sons anxiously waited their turn. In addition to its more urgent theme, Water of Life shows more technical skill and a more sophisticated handling of color than Turkana Women (1979). Breast-Feeding Mother (1981) Pacita Abad (1946-2004), Breast-Feeding Mother, 1981. Oil on canvas, 36 x 32 in. Image courtesy of Pacita Abad.com. Breast-feeding Mother (1981) portrays a natural, intimate moment between a mother and child. A woman is seated in a black wicker chair nursing a baby against a mottled green background. According to Abad, the woman is a single mother from the Dominican Republic, where “divorce is not practiced and birth control is not a common practice” so “many mothers are left by their men without financial and child support.” With her hair in colorful curlers and wearing dangling earrings, the woman appears as though she were interrupted by the baby while dressing. She gazes into the distance, her bra half removed as the infant nurses at her uncovered breast. Photo of Pacita Abad with one of the paintings from her trapunto Masks and Spirits series, n.d. Image courtesy of the Walker Art Center and Colossal. Trapunto Paintings Around 1980, Abad invented her signature hand-stitched trapunto painting style while living in Boston and painting with the artists Maria Fang, Barbara Newman, and Joana Kao. Adapting techniques from Newman’s puppet-making, Abad developed a trapunto painting style, after an Italian technique of stitching and stuffing fabric to give a three-dimensional sculptural effect to textiles. Trapunto comes from the Italian word “to quilt.” It is a method of quilting that is also called “stuffed technique.” Abad employed the method on canvas. Trapunto exhibition view at the Museum of Contemporary Art and Design, Manila, Philippines, 2018. Image courtesy of Walker Art Center and Colossal. African Mephisto (1981) In 1981, Abad created her earliest known trapunto work named African Mephisto, which inaugurated her “Masks and Spirits” series (1981-2001), a group of works focusing on Indigenous masking traditions. Made following two stays in Sudan in 1979 and 1980, African Mephisto is based on a portrait of a Dinka man Abad painted while there. Decorative markings and symbols cover a pinched, ghostly white painted face. The mantle the figure wears consists of semicircular bands of brightly colored and patterned cloth, some of which Abad acquired in Sudan, others she painted inspired by woven baskets she saw in Omdurman [a city in Sudan] that constitute the cape he wears. The work’s title, African Mephisto, refers in part to István Szabó’s award-winning 1981 film, Mephisto, about an actor in Nazi Germany who sells his soul to the regime in return for success and acclaim. Pacita Abad (1946-2004), African Mephisto, 1981. Acrylic, rickrack ribbons, tie-dyed cloth, and painted cloth on stitched and padded canvas, 106 x 71 in. Image courtesy of Artforum. Marcos and His Cronies (1985) Another key work from Abad’s Masks and Spirits series is 1985’s Marcos and His Cronies, an over sixteen-foot-tall trapunto that parodies the Philippine dictator Ferdinand Marcos. It is one of Abad’s rare explicitly political works. Originally called The Medicine Man, the tapestry-like painting was inspired by a wooden Sinhalese Sanni exorcism mask Abad saw in Sri Lanka when traveling on the back roads down the mountains from Kandy to Galle in 1984. She noticed the mask hanging outside the home of a traditional medicine man in a rural area of the country and created the monumental work after her return to Manila while Ferdinand Marcos was still president of the Philippines. Abad did not officially change the name of this trapunto to “Marcos and His Cronies” until after she left the country in January 1986, just before Marcos was deposed. Against a patchwork background encrusted with tiny colored buttons signifying the multitudes of people he oppressed, the central figure of Marcos appears as a reptilian, disease-ridden red and green demon surrounded by writhing ringed snakes and beaded cobras with tiny figures representing the many people he destroyed dangling from between his teeth and clenched in his fists. He is flanked by eighteen of his political cronies, most denoted by smaller masks adorned with gleaming fangs. Marcos stands atop the clownish head of his wife Imelda, whose toothy grin Abad studded with rhinestones in homage to her penchant for extravagance and ostentation. Pacita Abad (1946-2004), Marcos and His Cronies, 1985. Acrylic, oil, textile collage, mirrors, shells, buttons, glass beads, gold thread and padded cloth on stitched and padded cloth, 197 x 115 in. Singapore Art Museum, Tanjong Pagar Distripark, Singapore. Image courtesy of Artsy. Masks from Six Continents (1990-1992) Pacita Abad (1946-2004), Masks from Six Continents, 1990-1992. Washington, DC Metro Center. Image courtesy of Tate Gallery, London. In 1990, Abad was awarded a major commission to show her work at the Metro Center in Washington, DC for a three-year installation. She exhibited six monumental trapunto paintings she called Masks from Six Continents as each work represented a different continent. The installation included a version of Abad’s European Mask (1990), which is in the permanent collection of the Tate Gallery in London. Pacita Abad (1946-2004), European Mask, 1990. Acrylic paint, silkscreen and thread on canvas, 187 x 252 in. Image courtesy of Tate Gallery, London. The titles of the masks reference the cultures that inspired their shapes, patterns and techniques from Abad’s globe-trotting journeys. Africa is Kongo Mask, North America is Hopi Mask, and South America is Mayan Mask. Of the six masks, European Mask is the only one that is generically titled with the continent's name. According to Abad, each mask reflected “all the different people I see on the train.” L.A. Liberty (1992) Pacita Abad (1946-2004), L.A. Liberty, 1992. Acrylic, cotton yarn, plastic buttons, mirrors, gold thread, painted cloth on stitched and padded canvas, 94 x 58 in. Photo: Max McClure. Courtesy Pacita Abad Estate. Image courtesy of Artforum. L.A. Liberty (1992) from Abad’s series entitled Immigrant Experience (1990-1995) resulted from a visit to New York’s Ellis Island where she saw that the narrative of immigration being mythologized largely celebrates the experience of white Europeans arriving in the the first half of the twentieth century, excluding later immigrants of color like herself. Countering this historical erasure, Abad recast Lady Liberty as “an international woman of color,” a phrase coined by artist Faith Ringgold in a 2003 essay describing the piece. Liberty’s facial features are based on those of a friend of Abad’s. Like Frédéric Auguste Bartholdi’s original Neoclassical statue, she wears a Grecian robe, spiked crown, and holds a torch and tablet in her hands. However, the robe, torch, and tablet of L.A. Liberty are vividly patterned. Coupled with her mahogany complexion, dark hair and bangs, and the red and yellow earring observed hanging from one ear, this Liberty speaks of different traditions. Echoing the rays on her crown, rays of intense color radiate behind her like refracted sunlight, picking up the colors of her robe. Some scholars have suggested that the “L.A.” in the title might stand for “Latin America,” symbolizing the thousands of Asian and Latin American immigrants who have entered the United States through its Western and Southern borders and not Ellis Island. Abad herself became a U.S. citizen in 1994 having first arrived to visit in the U.S. in 1970 through San Francisco. Final Work and Death Ten years later, in 2004, at the age of 58, Abad’s life was tragically cut short following a long battle with lung cancer. Nethertheless, Abad’s rich artistic legacy spanned thirty-two years. She creat[ed] more than 4,500 artworks as well as public art installations and paint[ed] the Alkaff Bridge, (built in 1997), a 55-meter steel bridge in Singapore with 2,350 circles. This colorful pedestrian bridge symbolizing the friendship between Singapore and the Philippines was completed just months before her death. Pacita Abad (1946-2004), Alkaff Bridge at Robertson Quay, Singapore. Photo by Hanidah Amin. Image courtesy of Channel News Asia. Ribbon cutting at the launch of the newly repainted Alkaff Bridge at Robertson Quay on July 12, 2019. Image courtesy of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs Singapore. Legacy and Google Doodle In her lifetime, Abad was the subject of over 40 solo exhibitions at museums and galleries in the U.S., Asia, Europe, Africa and Latin America and participated in more than 50 group and traveling exhibitions. In 2020, her memory was honored with a Google Doodle, and from April 15–September 3, 2023, the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis mounted the first comprehensive retrospective of Abad’s work to date featuring over 100 works, many never before displayed in the U.S. Entitled simply Pacita Abad, it was organized by the Walker in collaboration with the Pacita Abad Art Estate and curated by Victoria Sung. Her work is in public, private, and corporate art collections in over 70 countries. Interest in this artist, a petite, once overlooked woman of color, deservedly grows as both the Dallas Museum of Art and the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art recently acquired major works. 2020 Google Doodle honoring Pacita Abad. Image courtesy of ARTnews. For more information on Pacita Abad and her art, visit pacitaabad.com.