Victoria Claflin Woodhull, later Victoria Woodhull Martin, was an American leader of the women's suffrage movement who ran for president of the United States in the 1872 election. While many historians and authors agree that Woodhull was the first woman to run for the presidency, some disagree with classifying it as a true candidacy because she was younger than the constitutionally mandated age of 35.
Helen Frankenthaler was an American abstract expressionist painter. She was a major contributor to the history of postwar American painting. Having exhibited her work for over six decades, she spanned several generations of abstract painters while continuing to produce vital and ever-changing new work. Frankenthaler began exhibiting her large-scale abstract expressionist paintings in contemporary museums and galleries in the early 1950s. She was included in the 1964 Post-Painterly Abstraction exhibition curated by Clement Greenberg that introduced a newer generation of abstract painting that came to be known as color field. Born in Manhattan, she was influenced by Greenberg, Hans Hofmann, and Jackson Pollock's paintings. Her work has been the subject of several retrospective exhibitions, including a 1989 retrospective at the Museum of Modern Art in New York City, and been exhibited worldwide since the 1950s. In 2001, she was awarded the National Medal of Arts.
Lenore "Lee" Krasner was an American Abstract Expressionist painter and visual artist active primarily in New York. She received her early academic training at the Women's Art School of Cooper Union, and the National Academy of Design from 1928 to 1932. Krasner's exposure to Post-Impressionism at the newly opened Museum of Modern Art in 1929 led to a sustained interest in modern art. In 1937, she enrolled in classes taught by Hans Hofmann, which led her to integrate influences of Cubism into her paintings. During the Great Depression, Krasner joined the Works Progress Administration's Federal Art Project, transitioning to war propaganda artworks during the War Services era.
Elaine Marie Catherine de Kooning was an Abstract Expressionist and Figurative Expressionist painter in the post-World War II era. She wrote extensively on the art of the period and was an editorial associate for Art News magazine.
The National Museum of Women in the Arts (NMWA), located in Washington, D.C., is "the first museum in the world solely dedicated" to championing women through the arts. NMWA was incorporated in 1981 by Wallace and Wilhelmina Holladay. Since opening in 1987, the museum has acquired a collection of more than 6,000 works by more than 1,000 artists, ranging from the 16th century to today. The collection includes works by Mary Cassatt, Alma Woodsey Thomas, Élisabeth Louise Vigée-LeBrun, and Amy Sherald. NMWA also holds the only painting by Frida Kahlo in Washington, D.C., Self-Portrait Dedicated to Leon Trotsky.
Claribel Cone (1864–1929) and Etta Cone (1870–1949), collectively known as the Cone sisters, were active as American art collectors, world travelers, and socialites during the first part of the 20th century. Claribel trained as a physician and Etta as a pianist. Their social circle included Henri Matisse, Pablo Picasso and Gertrude Stein. They gathered one of the best known private collections of modern art in the United States at their Baltimore apartments, and the collection now makes up a wing of the Baltimore Museum of Art. Their collection was estimated to be worth almost a billion US dollars in 2002.
Joan Mitchell was an American artist who worked primarily in painting and printmaking, and also used pastel and made other works on paper. She was an active participant in the New York School of artists in the 1950s. A native of Chicago, she is associated with the American abstract expressionist movement, even though she lived in France for much of her career.
The 9th Street Art Exhibition of Paintings and Sculpture is the official title artist Franz Kline hand-lettered onto the poster he designed for the Ninth Street Show. Now considered historic, the artist-led exhibition marked the formal debut of Abstract Expressionism, and the first American art movement with international influence. The School of Paris, long the headquarters of the global art market, typically launched new movements, so there was both financial and cultural fall-out when all the excitement was suddenly emanating from New York. The postwar New York avant-garde, artists like Willem de Kooning and Jackson Pollock, would soon become "art stars," commanding large sums and international attention. The Ninth Street Show marked their "stepping-out," and that of nearly 75 other artists, including Harry Jackson, Helen Frankenthaler, Michael Goldberg, Joan Mitchell, Grace Hartigan, Robert De Niro Sr., John Ferren, Philip Guston, Elaine de Kooning, Lee Krasner, Franz Kline, Ad Reinhardt, David Smith, Milton Resnick, Joop Sanders, Robert Motherwell, Barnett Newman, and many others who were then mostly unknown to an art establishment that ignored experimental art without a ready market.
Lady Tennessee Celeste Claflin, Viscountess of Montserrat, also known as Tennie C., was an American suffragist best known as the first woman, along with her sister Victoria Woodhull, to open a Wall Street brokerage firm, which occurred in 1870.
Perle Fine (1905–1988) was an American Abstract expressionist painter. Fine's work was most known by its combination of fluid and brushy rendering of the materials and the use of biomorphic forms encased and intertwined with irregular geometric shapes.
Grace Hartigan was an American Abstract Expressionist painter and a significant member of the vibrant New York School of the 1950s and 1960s. Her circle of friends, who frequently inspired one another in their artistic endeavors, included Jackson Pollock, Larry Rivers, Helen Frankenthaler, Willem and Elaine de Kooning and Frank O'Hara. Her paintings are held by numerous major institutions, including the Museum of Modern Art in New York City. As director of the Maryland Institute College of Art's Hoffberger School of Painting, she influenced numerous young artists.
William Morton Grinnell was a United States diplomat, lawyer, banker and author.
Konrad Bernhard Schramm was a German socialist revolutionary and as a result a member of the Communist League. Following the suppression of the uprisings of 1848 and 1849, Schramm refugeed to London, England in 1849. He became a manager of the Neue Rheinische Zeitung: Politisch-ökonomische Revue. Schramm was also a friend and an associate of both Karl Marx and Frederick Engels.
Philip Pavia (1911-2005) was a culturally influential American artist of Italian descent, known for his scatter sculpture and figurative abstractions, and the debate he fostered among many of the 20th century's most important art thinkers. A founder of the New York School of Abstract Expressionism, he "did much to shift the epicenter of Modernism from Paris to New York," both as founding organizer of The Club and as founder, editor and publisher of the short-lived but influential art journal It Is: A Magazine for Abstract Art. Reference to the magazine appears in the archives of more than two dozen celebrated art figures, including Picasso, Peggy Guggenheim, and art critic Clement Greenberg. The Club is credited with inspiring art critic Harold Rosenberg’s influential essay “The American Action Painters" and the historic 9th Street Show.
Woodhull & Claflin's Weekly was an American weekly newspaper first published on May 14, 1870, by sisters Victoria Woodhull and Tennessee Claflin. It was among the first publications to be published by women. It lasted until June 10, 1876.
Natalie Edgar is an American abstract expressionist painter, a former critic for ARTnews, and a key writer and historian on the birth and development of abstract expressionism.
Zenaida Gourievna Booyakovitch, known as Zuka, was an American artist of Russian descent who lived and worked in Paris. She was awarded Chevalier of L'ordre des Arts et des Lettres of France in 1990.
Some Living American Women Artists, also referred to as Some Living American Women Artists/Last Supper, is a collage by American artist Mary Beth Edelson created during the second wave feminist movement. The central portion is an image based on Leonardo da Vinci’s 15th-century mural Last Supper. Edelson replaced the faces of Christ's disciples with cut-out photographs of American women artists. She surrounded the central image with additional photographs of American women artists. The work is in the collection of the Museum of Modern Art.
Action, Gesture, Paint: Women Artists and Global Abstraction 1940 -1970 was an art exhibition held at the Whitechapel Gallery from 9 February 2023 through 7 May 2023. The exhibit presented 150 mid-century abstract paintings by 81 women artists. The show included artists from Asia, Europe, North America, and South America.
