8 Incredible Women Artists who Changed the History of Art

Thousands of women have left their mark on art history. This is the story of eight of them.

Florine Stettheimer, Hilma af Klint, Marianne North... These women all have something in common: they used paintbrushes to capture their own view of the world. Find out more about the life of eight incredible women artists who changed the history of art in this video:

1. Florine Stettheimer

Painter, stage designer, poet and (together with her sisters) host of some of the best turn of the century New York gatherings. Florine Stettheimer’s parties were attended by some of the most brilliant artists and critics of her time, including: Carl Van Vechten, Marcel Duchamp and Georgia O’Keeffe.

Stettheimer is also responsible for what is considered to be the first nude self-portrait in history: A Model (Nude Self-Portrait).

Stettheimer’s colorful paintings depicted the daily life of New York’s élite, their parties, places and habits, with humor and irony. Her will ordered her brothers to destroy all of her work. But her family ignored her wishes, and her work can still be admired today.

2. Rosa Bonheur

Unlike the other the painters in our selection, Rosa Bonheur achieved recognition during her lifetime. She was one of the 19th century’s most popular artists, thanks to her paintings of animals. Bonheur was a meticulous artist. She visited abattoirs and livestock markets to understand the bodies she recreated on canvas.

Rosa spent a year and a half visiting the Paris horse fair and sketching from life, in order to create one of her most famous paintings. She wore trousers to be more comfortable, and had to ask the police for special permission to do so! El Cid, her portrait of a lion is one of the few paintings by women belonging to the Prado Museum’s permanent collection.

3. Marianne North

Marianne was the first woman to star in a great scientific voyage and spent her fortune traveling around the world painting unknown plants and flowers. Ms. North broke out of the role for which she was predestined and set off an adventure that made her into an outstanding botanical illustrator. The extraordinary colour of her illustrations, along with their rigor and botanical accuracy continue to attract the attention of specialists today.

The artist donated much of her work to Kew Gardens in London, which created the Marianne North Gallery in her honor. She hung her own paintings on the wall, in order of the area where they had been painted, forming a beautiful mosaic.

4. Tarsila do Amaral

If you mention Brazilian Modernism, you have to discuss Tarsila do Amaral, one of the movement's greatest artists. “I want to be my country’s painter” she wrote while in Paris, where she had moved to study. And she achieved her ambition. Her painting A Caipirinha is the most expensive artwork sold at auction in Brazil.

5. Sister Plautilla Nelli

You may not have heard of her, but Sister Plautilla Nelli was one of the most important Renaissance painters. She created the first Las Supper painted by a woman, an ambitious work measuring 7 meters long.

One of the most curious details about the painting is an inscription below the artist’s signature. It reads: ’Orate pro pictora’ (Pray for the artist), which in Latin grammar confirms her female gender.

Sister Plautilla Nelli also set up an art studio in her convent, the St. Catherine of Siena in Florence, where she painted religious works alongside other nuns. Although she was unable to study anatomy, because she was a woman, she learned how to paint the human figure from other paintings and sculptures.

6. Hilma af Klint

Before names like Mondrian, Malévich and Kandinsky, there was another pioneer of abstract art. In Sweden in 1906, a woman named Hilma af Klint painted abstract images featuring line, color and geometric shapes. Unlike other abstract artists, Hilma af Klint didn’t want to ’dissolve reality’ but to make the invisible, visible, and to demonstrate that there is something else beyond our physical world.

But her story and contribution to abstract art remained hidden until the 1980s when an exhibition in Los Angeles began to proclaim her importance. Why? Although Hilma was ahead of her time, she instructed her descendants not to reveal her work until at least 20 years after her death. She feared such abstract work would not be understood by her own society.

Discover more about her life in this article.

7. Thelma Johnson Streat

Thelma Jonhnson Sreat was a painter, performer, dancer and the first black woman to be included in the MoMA permanent collection. Her work combines art with activism against racism.

Her most controversial painting was Death of a Negro Sailor, showing a black sailor dying after traveling abroad. He was protecting the democratic rights denied to him in the United States. She received threats from the KKK as a result of this painting.

8. Remedios Varo

Remedios Varo was a Surrealist Spanish painter, writer, and graphic artist and one of the first women to study at Madrid’s Royal Academy of Fine Arts of San Fernando (Real Academia de Bellas Artes de San Fernando). She was a Surrealist visionary. Her work created magical, esoteric worlds featuring women mixing with spiritual beings in surreal settings

Having lived in Paris, she moved to Mexico to live in exile during World War II, and it is here that she created most of her work. She often met artists and writers including Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera, Leonora Carrington and Octavio Paz.

These names are not the only ones that have left their mark on art history. Like them, thousands of other women have revealed their talent and created masterpieces. Did you know about these painters? Would you recommend including any other names in this list? Leave a note in the comments.

You may be interested in:

- Enjoy over a thousand works by Georgia O’Keeffe.
- Hilma af Klint: The Fascinating Story of an Abstract Art Pioneer.
- 5 Female Watercolor Artists Who Will Inspire Your Next Creation.