Iconic women artists of all times (Part 1)

Introduction

As we have joined the world earlier this month in the celebration of Women’s day, we would like to take our reflection one step further and look at the place of women in the broader art world. 

This article will be divided into two parts. In this first section, we will explore the works of women artists who have used art as a catharsis to express their traumas and suffering, materializing them into sublime masterpieces. In the second section, which will be released later, we will put the spotlight on some of the great women artists who have moved the frontiers of the art world through their creations and actions.

Transforming suffering into masterpieces: art as a therapy and as a cathartic act

In this article, we are interested in both discovering or discovering the stories of some of the women artists who have profoundly marked the history of art as well as the transcendent effect that art can have on tragic, doomed-like destinies. In particular, we will take a closer look at the lives and the works of three great artists: Artemisia Gentileschi, Frida Kahlo and Yayoi Kusama.

Artemisia Gentileschi (1593–1656)

The etymology of the name “Artemisia” is derived from Latin and Ancient Greek and is associated with “Artemis”, the Greek goddess of the hunt, wilderness and childbirth. The goddess is renowned for her strength and independence, qualities that Artemisia Gentileschi - the Italian Baroque painter we will be studying in this article - upheld during her life, notwithstanding the painful and difficult life experiences she had to endure. She mastered the art of oil painting at a time when women were not allowed to study art and become artists. Her deep admiration for the Caravaggio led her to paint the vibrant and lively historical scenes intensified by her deliberate use of chiaroscuro that are characteristic of her work. Her works are in the image of her personality and life. Dramatic, bold and powerful. 

Her life in brief

Artemisia Gentileschi was born in Rome and was the daughter of the painter Orazio Gentileschi (1563-1639). She learned painting from her father and met Caravaggio in his studio. There, she developed a taste for theatrical staging, dramatic lighting, and expressive gestures. Even early on, her favorite themes revolved around the depiction of women in art.

Despite her talent, Artemisia was rejected from the Roman academies because of her gender. However, her father recognized her skill and arranged for her to study with Agostino Tassi, a painter who was his friend at the time. Tragically, Tassi raped her in 1611 when she was 17 years old, leading to a long and traumatic court ruling during which she was slandered, humiliated and tortured. 

To help Artemisia escape this trauma, her father arranged her marriage to Pietro Antonio Stiattesi, a Florentine painter. She moved to Florence, where she began to gain recognition with her paintings depicting strong women figures of the Antiques or from the bible, put in spotlight with strong chiaroscuro effects a la Caravaggio. She worked on commissions for princes and was admitted to the Academy of Drawing alongside Michelangelo at a time where women were not allowed to study art at the Academy.

Her marriage did not end happily, and Artemisia returned to Rome in 1621. By then, she was financially independent through her portrait commissions. She traveled to Venice and Naples, seeking larger projects, and found success in Naples working for churches.

Artemisia later joined her father in England at the court of Charles I. Afterward, she returned to Italy in the 1650s and died in Naples at the age of 60.

2 artworks by Artemisia Gentileschi

After the traumatic episode of the rape, Artemisia Gentileschi began to develop an iconography centered around feminine violence. In this painting, Artemisia portrays Judith, a character from the Old Testament known for avenging her besieged city by seducing Holofernes and later beheading him. 

Stylistically, this painting exemplifies Artemisia’s singular approach : strong and powerful women from the Bible are depicted in a dramatic manner, with intense chiaroscuro effects. 

In terms of meaning and impact, it is believed that Artemisia gave Holofernes the facial features of Aogosto Tassi, her rapist and painted Judith like herself. In light of this, the painting serves as a profound cathartic act, symbolizing her triumph over her aggressor and her quest for revenge.

At a time when female painters were rare and often rejected from traditional art tracks, making it challenging for Artemisia Gentileschi to access male models, she painted several self-portraits. In this particular piece, she embodies the art of painting, one of the major arts. Artemisia portrays herself as independent, confident, focused and vigorous, reflecting her determination and skill as an artist.

Frida Kahlo (1907–1954) 

By now, pretty much everyone has heard or knows about Frida Kahlo, the iconic Mexican artist, renowned for her deeply personal self-portraits, in which she was never afraid to exhibit her famous unibrow and to explore universal themes such as identity, pain, and resilience. I invite you to rediscover the unique life of a woman whose life was marked by profound suffering, yet who has always chosen to live life to its full potential and in a highly free and colorful way. 

Her life in brief

Magdalena Frida Carmen Kahlo Calderón Asherman known as Frida Kahlo was born in Coyoacán in Mexico, daughter of a Mexican mother and a German father. She contracted poliomyelitis at a young age, hindering the proper development of her right leg and leading her to become lame. As the other children were mocking her because of this, she upheld her style and decided to wear large, loose pants and boyish style. At the time, she was passionate about natural sciences as a kid and aspired to become a doctor. 

The Mexican Revolution (1910-1920) is a key event in Mexico's modern history and in understanding Kahlo’s work. Indeed, this uprising against the authoritarian regime of Porfirio Díaz transformed the country's social, economic, and political structures. One of the major consequences of the revolution was the valorization of indigenous cultures and the quest for a unified national identity. In this context, art became a powerful tool to tell the story of the Mexican people and to promote revolutionary ideals such as social justice, equality, and the emancipation of the oppressed. Through her art, Frida Kahlo played a central role in this artistic and political movement and became a spokesperson for Mexicanism.

In 1925, at the age of 18, Frida was involved in a serious bus accident, in which she was impaled by a metal bar and almost died. While she was recovering in the hospital, she started painting and her father installed a mirror above her bed so she could paint herself. During this period, she created 55 self portraits, using painting to express her suffering and as a form of catharsis. 

Frida's unique style blended surrealism, realism, and strong symbolism. Her work explored themes of femininity, suffering, and identity, bringing important issues to the forefront. In life in general, she was deeply ahead of her time, often dressing like a boy, sporting a unibrow and a mustache, which she proudly featured in her paintings. 

In 1929, she married Diego Riviera, an established and very famous Mexican mural painter, whom she had met a couple years back. Their marriage is often described as a tumultuous union, marked by intense passions and mutual infidelities (notably with Frida’s own sister on his side, and the communist Leon Trotsky, on her side). The passionate love affair between the two artists led to divorce and remarriage. “I've had two serious accidents in my life. One was a bus accident, the other was Diego. Diego was by far the worst,” said the artist, testifying to the doomed destiny of his couple. Nevertheless, the two lovers shared a mutual tenderness and admiration.

In 1930, Diego and Frida moved to the United States, as Diego was commissioned to work on several projects in San Francisco. During this time, Frida had two miscarriages, which left a terrible mark on her, as she understood that she would never become a mother because of her disease and the bruises from the accident. 

In 1939, the couple made a trip to Paris, during which Frida encountered the Surrealists and became friends with André Breton and his wife. Back in Mexico in 1943, she started teaching, encouraging her students to appreciate Mexican popular culture and folk art. When she was too ill to commute to school, her students came to her house, La Casa Azul. Because of her deteriorating health, she had to undergo subsequent operations, which brought her further to her knees as her right leg had to be amputated. She died in July 1954, leaving behind her a total of 140 paintings and a lasting print on the history of art and society as a whole. 

2 artworks by Frida Kahlo

In this painting, Frida Kahlo portrays herself lying in a pool of blood, her husband Diego Rivera standing nearby, looking at her. The title of the painting, held by a dove and a raven, is ironic, as it symbolizes the numerous moral and physical wounds Frida endured during her tumultuous marriage with Diego, particularly her heartbreak following her husband’s affair with her sister. 

Stylistically, the painting also exemplifies Frida’s unique approach to painting, combining the use of naïve art style with deeply realistic, almost surrealist details along with distinguishable symbols.

Among the 55 self-portraits created by the painter, this one stands out as particularly dramatic. Indeed, the artist depicts herself naked, and bound in a corset, with her spine represented by an antique column, eroded by multiple wounds. As an echo to the painful accident she underwent as she was younger, she is riddled with nails, surrounded by a desolate landscape. Standing naked before us, tears streaming down her face, Frida Kahlo portrays herself as inherently in pain and vulnerable. Yet, her expression remains, impassable, solemn and almost serene, making her profoundly resilient and powerful. 

This painting is another example of Frida Kahlo’s ability to transform personal trauma into compelling visual narratives.

Yayoi Kusama (1929–present) 

If you like polka dots, then you might as well like the works of Japanese artist, Yayoi Kusama who was obsessed with them. Perhaps you’ve already come across or heard about her Infinity Mirror rooms that were installed in various cities of the world. In any case, this highly vibrant and colourful woman, passionate about fashion and design, already marked the history of contemporary art with her work, which blends surrealism, pop art, and psychological exploration. Suffering from hallucinations and her great fear of seeing herself disappear, swallowed up by the infinity of the universe, Yayoi Kusama decided to transcend her suffering into wide-scale immersive masterpieces. 

Her life in brief

Yayoi Kusama was born in Matsumoto, Japan and grew up in a conservative family with an authoritarian father. Propelled into the realities of the Second World War, the whole family got involved in the war effort, including Yayoi who created parachutes and military clothing in a factory. 

At the age of 10, she began to suffer from visual hallucinations and obsessional disorder, at which point she started drawing as a means to fight against this mental illness. Despite her parent’s disapproval, she decided to pursue art studies in Kyoto and started to exhibit her works, at a time when art was a male-dominated field in a highly conservative Japan. She anchored her work into the exploration and application of the principle of accumulation, using the polka dot as her favourite and most recurring pattern.  

In 1957, Yayoi Kusama moved to the United States, with the help of the famous American painter, Georgia O’Keeffe. There, she started to work on psychedelic installations using phallic forms and organized performances in iconic places of New York, including the MoMA or the Statue of Liberty. The purpose of these happenings was not only artistic, but also political as the artist fights for several causes, including women’s sexual freedom and spiritual revolution. As she also supports women in their right to dispose of their bodies, a lot of the gatherings’ participants were naked, which caused stirs but also contributed to her notoriety and extensive media coverage. 

In these performances, Yayoi Kusama rarely staged herself. She used other people’s bodies, staging them into choreography inspired by butō, a type of Japanese choreographic art, which explores the specificities of the body, in a deeply slow manner. 

Having spent two decades in the United States, creating, staging, organizing and performing, the artist decided to return to Japan in 1977 and to enter a psychiatric facility, only going out to work in her studio. Being interned and working on her psychological trauma for the past forty years has given her the opportunity to develop her art as a form of therapy.

At the age of 94, the artist continues to fascinate people around the world with her psychedelic creations. She still boasts an eccentric style and an atypical and peculiar personality. Despite the obstacles posed by gender bias in the art world, Yayoi Kusama is today one of the few female artists whose work is sold on every continent.

2 works by Yayoi Kusama

In 1966, Yayoi Kusama created “Peep Show or Endless Love Show” and revisited one of the devices associated with eroticism and pornography. The experience was installed in an hexagonal space covered with mirrors reflecting a looping light device set to Beatles music. Only small-scale openings in the walls allowed visitors to view the installation, to suggest the stance of a viewer or a client engaging in voyeurism. This work preceded the artist's “Infinity Mirror Rooms”.

This work emphasizes the principle of accumulation, a pillar of her work since the 1960s. By accumulating forms, often soft ones, the artist sought to transcend her fear, presenting her work as a form of therapy. Indeed, she mentioned that this installation helped her reconnect with nature: “full of solitude, unable to sleep, I curl up in my Flower Bed for the night, because flowers are soft and loving. I'm like an insect returning to its flower for the night; the petals close over me like a mother's womb protects her unborn child”.

Conclusion

What is common to the stories of these three women is their resilience and their unwavering inclination towards life, rather than letting suffering define their existence. This stance, in opposition to death, was a deliberate choice, which materialized into sublime works of art. From this, I conclude that if they chose life, and in doing so chose art, then art must indeed be life. Art is life.