Your art history post for today: by Olga Costa (1913-1993), The Fruit Seller (La vendedora de frutas), 1951, Museo de Arte Moderno, Mexico City. #WomensHistoryMonth #womenartists #womanartist #mexicanartist #mexicanartists

From Inverarte Art Gallery: ‘Born as Olga Kostakowsky in Leipzig, Germany, on August 28, 1913, Olga Costa arrived in Mexico in 1925, when she was just twelve years old. Her family, of Jewish-Russian origin, was seeking a place to rebuild their lives, far from the growing winds of intolerance sweeping across Europe. Mexico, with its light, colors, and traditions, offered young Olga a fertile ground where she could plant her roots and nurture her art.

Her European childhood became a distant memory. It was in Mexico where she truly came of age, not only as a person but also as an artist, eventually changing her name to Olga Costa. The vibrancy of the markets, the popular life, the pre-Hispanic art, and traditional crafts all captured her imagination with a force that never left her…

Costa dedicated herself to building a body of work marked by profound originality. Her paintings are notable for their exaltation of color, formal synthesis, and a loving gaze toward Mexican popular life. Unlike many of her contemporaries, Costa was not drawn to grand political themes or heroic tales of the Revolution. Her universe was different: that of flowers, fruits, anonymous women, and domestic altars. Her first solo exhibition took place at the Galería de Arte Mexicano in 1945. Her most celebrated painting, La vendedora de frutas (1951), considered an icon of modern Mexican art, was commissioned by the National Institute of Fine Arts and Literature (INBAL) for the exhibition “Art mexicain du précolombien à nos jours” at the Musée National d’Art Moderne in Paris, and is now part of the collection of the Museo de Arte Moderno in Mexico City.’

By Uche Uguru (born 1993), Queen African Series 6, collage on canvas, 100x80cm, 2025, ©️ Uche Uguru. #womanartist #womenartists #africanartist #africanartists #art

From the artist’s Instagram: ‘The Queen African painting shows a strong and beautiful Nigerian woman. She wears a headwrap, which is a special part of Nigerian traditional clothing. Her face looks straight at the viewer with confidence.
The painting is made from small strips of paper, which creates a sense of movement. You can also see lines on her face that look like scars. In some African cultures, scars were used to identify people. But these scars can also represent the difficult challenges African women face, like emotional pain or environmental problems.
Queen African celebrates the beauty, strength, and resilience of African women. It reminds us that we should support and care for each other, and that together, we can create a better world.

As Adetutu Alabi says, "You can be anything you want to be.
Don't let your scars hold you back.”’

The artist’s Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/ucheuguru/

Your art history post for today: by Alice Neel (1900-1984), Woman, 1966, oil on canvas, 46 x 31 inches (116.8 x 78.7 cm), private collection, © The Estate of Alice Neel. #WomensHistoryMonth #womanartist #womenartists #art #painting #oilpainting Neel painted this portrait a year after the 1965 Immigration and Nationality Act removed longstanding quotas on immigrants from India, among other nations.

From Sebastian Smee, “Alice Neel was the greatest American portraitist of the 20th century. Her work continues to astonish,” The Washington Post, March 25, 2021: “Neel, as a portraitist, was ecumenical. She painted people of color, the poor, the elderly, children, immigrants, gay and transgender people, workers, artists and political activists. She painted them naked and clothed, ailing and healthy, in Greenwich Village in the 1930s and later in Spanish Harlem and, from 1962 on, in West Harlem. She paid attention to them in ways that felt — and still feel — connected to love.”

Green for St. Patrick’s Day: a work by Tamara de Lempicka (1894–1980), Young Woman in Green, ca. 1930–1931, oil on board, Centre Pompidou - Musée National d'Art Moderne, Paris, © 2023 Tamara de Lempicka Estate. More in ALT. #WomensHistoryMonth #womanartist #womenartists #art #painting #oilpainting

From AWARE (Archives of Women Artists Research & Exhibitions): “Born of a Russian Jewish father and a Polish mother, Tamara de Lempicka spent her childhood in St. Petersburg, Warsaw, and Lausanne. She maintained memories from her childhood of a life of a privilege, punctuated by prestigious soirées in the company of the cultured Saint Petersburg nobility. Shortly after her marriage in 1916 to the Polish lawyer Tadeusz Lempicki, she saw the easy happiness for which she was destined swept away by the 1917 October Revolution. Forced to flee the Bolshevik regime, the couple ended up in Paris, where Lempicka had to sell her jewelry to survive. She divorced her husband in 1928 in order to marry the baron Raoul Kuffner in 1933. In Paris, she frequented the ateliers of Maurice Denis and André Lhote. She came into her own style around 1925, when, encouraged by Count Emanuele di Castelbarco, a Milanese gallery owner, she painted 28 new paintings in six months, including thirty which were shown at the Bottega di Poesia gallery in Milan. Quickly becoming one of the most in-demand portrait artists, she completed a string of portraits of the haute bourgeoisie and the Italian and French aristocracy – like those of the Marquis of Afflito (1925) or the Duchess of Hall (1925). Aside from the important figures of the high society she wanted to conquer by painting, it was modernity itself that shines through as a theme of her work. The incredibly close framing and the theatrical look of some of the subjects in her paintings seem to come from the silent films of the early twentieth century. Contemporary architecture and the city—especially the skyscrapers of New York that fascinated her—serve as the background of her paintings.”

By Mela Muter (1876-1967), the first professional Jewish woman painter in Poland, Self-Portrait by Moonlight, ca. 1899-1900, oil on canvas, 72 × 46 cm, collection of Bolesława and Lina Nawrocki. She moved to Paris in 1901, becoming a French citizen in 1927. #WomensHistoryMonth #womanartist #womenartists #art #painting #oilpainting #art

She lived a life marked by tragedy. Born into money, married into money, died in poverty. From Museu Nacional d'Art de Catalunya: “The war and divorce left her in a precarious situation, alone, marked by the stigma of being Jewish and having participated in the Socialist cause, and without any connection with her original country and homeland. She died when she was 91 years old and left the works she possessed to an NGO.“

Also from Museu Nacional d'Art de Catalunya: ‘Mela Muter (1876 – 1967), one of the most recognised Polish artists in Paris during the twenties and thirties, it was said that she painted "like a man". Her art, very often far from the delicacies of how the women were supposed to have painted, was of a luminous and vibrant realism, which would absorb the post-impressionist European tendencies.
She came to Catalonia various times and here she didn't go unnoticed either: she got on well with people from the Catalan culture, among them being the art dealer and gallery owner Josep Dalmau, with whom she established a friendship and for this reason she painted various portraits of him.
During the Second World War she lived in Avignon, but problems with her sight slowed down her production.”

Your art history post for today: by Annie Louisa Swynnerton (1844-1933), The Sense of Sight, 1895, oil on canvas, 87.3 x 101 cm, Walker Art Gallery, Liverpool, England. #WomensHistoryMonth #womanartist #womenartists #art #painting #oilpainting

From the website: “Swynnerton was a leading artist of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, specialising in Symbolist pictures. Here, Swynnerton plays between physical and spiritual senses of sight. The young woman with feathered wings looks up, enraptured, at something out of our view. A fleck of golden light is reflected in her eyes. It is unclear whether she is looking at something natural or supernatural.”

Your art history post for today: by Shima Seien (島成園, 1892–1970), Mudai [Untitled], 1918, 85 × 108 cm, Osaka City Museum of Fine Arts. #WomensHistoryMonth #womanartist #womenartists #japaneseart

From Alice Gordenker, Japan Living Arts, April 2, 2021: “Shima Seien (島成園, 1892–1970) worked as a Nihonga painter at a time when few women in Japan were able to pursue art as a profession. Throughout her career, she struggled against overt discrimination against women artists. This frustration is palpable in her 1918 painting “Untitled” (無題), in which a woman in a black kimono sits on the floor, her hair disheveled, staring directly at the viewer. Under one eye spreads an ugly bruise, as if she has just been struck. The bruise, Seien said, was symbolic of the many abuses routinely inflicted upon women by men.”

Your art history post for today: by Suzanne Fabry (1904-1985), Triple Self-Portrait, 1934, oil on canvas, 77.5 x 89.5 cm (30½ by 35¼ inches, photo: Sotheby’s Paris, March 2023. #WomensHistoryMonth #womanartist #womenartists #art #painting #oilpainting

The catalogue note: “Suzanne Fabry was the daughter of the Symbolist painter Emile Fabry (1865–1966) and was immersed from her early childhood in an artistic environment. Her father’s many friends became her teachers: Jean Delville, Constant Montald, Fernand Khnopff and Victor Horta. Although she was not herself a Symbolist painter, she was possessed of a lyrical and dreamlike temperament and a very distinctive sensibility, especially evident in her portraits.

Between 1932 and 1934, Suzanne Fabry produced several canvases in which her face is depicted in multiples. This was not simply a question of presenting herself to the viewer, or even to herself, frontally and in profile, nor of experimenting with the art of portraiture, in which she excelled, but rather of a deeper self-examination, marked by a piercing, investigative gaze and an absence of complacency.

The Triple Self Portrait focuses less on an analysis of her incisive gaze. Here, the eyes are turned towards some other, unspecified place, lost in the distance or modestly lowered. The hand gestures are equally revealing, suggesting that the artist is protecting, controlling or restraining herself. Suzanne Fabry had a very gentle nature, calm but rarely smiling. At thirty years old, this young woman was in full artistic bloom yet retained a certain reserve.”