FROM RENAISSANCE TRAILBLAZERS TO CONTEMPORARY ICONS, THESE INFLUENTIAL WOMEN CONTINUE TO INSPIRE ARTISTS AND AUDIENCES ALIKE
By Andrew Nodell | March 3, 2026
For centuries, a professional art career was a male-dominated pursuit. Only until recent generations have we seen measurable strides toward greater gender equity in the visual arts, yet many female talents of the past are still overlooked in favor of their male contemporaries. Consider Polish painter Zofia Stryjeńska, who, in 1911, cut her hair and disguised herself as a man to attend the (then all-male) Academy of Fine Arts in Munich. And to think that the masterful work of Baroque painter Artemisia Gentileschi was widely eclipsed in her lifetime by a sensational trial that portrayed her inaccurately as the villain in a sexual assault case she held against her mentor, Agostino Tassi. As philosopher George Santayana famously observed, “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.” In honor of International Women’s Day, we celebrate the great talent and fortitude of 14 female artists — some well-known and others less-recognized — whose journeys will continue to inspire the creative expression of future generations.
Sofonisba Anguissola ‘Self-portrait, Łańcut Castle, Poland,’ 1556. Oil on canvas. 25.9 x 22.4 inches (66.0 x 57.0 cm). Public domain.
Sofonisba Anguissola (c. 1532–1625)
Born to a relatively poor noble Italian family, Sofonisba Anguissola built an international career at a time when women were largely excluded from formal artistic training. As a young woman, she was introduced to Michelangelo, who recognized her talent, and later she served as an official court painter for King Phillip II of Spain. Her most celebrated paintings are self-portraits and portraits of her family, created before her move to the Spanish court, and her success helped pave the way for other women to earnestly pursue artistic careers.
Artemisia Gentileschi ‘Judith and her Maidservant,’ circa 1615. Public domain.
Artemisia Gentileschi (1593–c. 1656)
Considered among the most accomplished 17th-century artists, Artemisia Gentileschi initially worked in the style of her contemporary Caravaggio. By age 15, she was producing professional work and became the first woman to join the Accademia delle Arti del Disegno in Florence. She later served as an expatriate painter at the court of Charles I of England, from 1638 to 1642. Specializing in scenes of strong women, Gentileschi was more recently celebrated with an exhibition of her works at London’s National Gallery in 2020 — the museum’s first major show dedicated to a female artist — and with record auction sales. Her extraordinary talent and success were largely overshadowed during her lifetime by the negative public perception she endured for charging painter Agostino Tassi with raping her when she was 18. Tassi was found guilty of the crime in 1612, but Gentileschi became the villain in the court of public opinion.
Berthe Morisot ‘Portrait de Mme Morisot et de sa fille Mme Pontillon ou La lecture,’ 1869/70. Public domain.
Berthe Morisot (1841–1895)
A founding member of the Impressionist movement, French painter and printmaker Berthe Morisot exhibited in the group’s 1874 debut show alongside contemporaries Paul Cézanne, Edgar Degas, and Claude Monet, among others. The show received mostly negative critical reception at the time, with Le Figaro critic Albert Wolff describing the group as “five or six lunatics of which one is a woman” and observing Morisot’s works as “[maintaining] feminine grace…amid the outpourings of a delirious mind.” In 1890, just five years before succumbing to pneumonia at age 54, Morisot journaled about being a woman in the male-dominated 19th-century art world: “I don’t think there has ever been a man who treated a woman as an equal, and that’s all I would have asked for, for I know I’m worth as much as they.” More than a century later, in 2013, Morisot’s 1881 painting Après le déjeuner set the world auction record for a woman artist at the time, selling for more than $10.9 million.
Mary Cassatt ‘Sara in a Red Dress,’ circa 1901. Pastel on card. 15-3/4 x 17-3/4 inches (40.0 x 45.1 cm) (sheet). Sold for $106,250 in a November 2021 Heritage auction.
Mary Cassatt (1844–1926)
At 15, Mary Cassatt began her artistic training at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts in Philadelphia, where the future Impressionist master also laid the foundation for her lifelong advocacy of gender equity. She later said, “There was no teaching” at the academy, because female students were not permitted to use live models until somewhat later and their principal training was primarily drawing from casts. After immigrating to France in the 1870s, she opened a studio in Paris and, championed by Edgar Degas, became the only American officially associated with the Impressionists. Her most renowned works depicted the “New Woman,” a feminist ideal that emerged in the late 19th century and confronted societal norms of the era. Her intimate portraits of women and children were shaped by time spent with them in their private spaces, something a male artist would not have been socially permitted to do at the time.
Georgia O’Keeffe ‘Alligator Pears,’ circa 1923. Oil on canvas. 12 x 10 inches (30.5 x 25.4 cm). Sold for $461,000 in a November 2014 Heritage auction.
Georgia O’Keeffe (1887–1986)
Often dubbed “the mother of American Modernism,” Georgia O’Keeffe developed a revolutionary abstract style marked by her distilled landscapes and magnified large-format canvases of flowers and animal bones, turning ordinary objects into something monumental. O’Keeffe understood the importance of financial and creative autonomy from an early age and learned from her husband, photographer Alfred Stieglitz, how to manage and control all aspects of her career. Following Stieglitz’s death in 1946, O’Keeffe continued to maintain the high prices her late husband had demanded for her work by actively buying back many of her own canvases, either from individual collectors or at auction. When she died at age 98, the shrewd artist owned nearly half of the roughly 2,000 works she created in her lifetime and left an estate valued at more than $70 million.
Alma Thomas ‘Aquatic Gardens,’ 1973. Acrylic on canvas. 72 x 52 inches (182.8 x 132.1 cm). Smithsonian American Art Museum, bequest of the artist, 1980.36.7.
Alma Thomas (1891–1978)
A leading figure of the Washington Color School, Alma Thomas created shimmering color-field canvases inspired by her interest in nature and music. Groundbreaking moments punctuated the artist’s career, from her time at Howard University — where, in 1924, she became the first graduate of the university’s Department of Art — to her preeminence as the first Black female artist to host a solo exhibition at the Whitney Museum of American Art, in 1972. And, during the Obama Administration, she posthumously became the first Black woman to be included in the White House’s permanent collection. Only after retiring from teaching in 1960 did Thomas launch her full-time professional art career in her late 60s, subtly infusing her creative output with a feminist spirit. In 1977, Thomas told The New York Times, “[I] never married a man but my art. What man would have ever appreciated what I was up to?”
A Dorothy Waugh-designed poster for the Department of Agriculture’s 1930s “Save Our Wildlife” campaign
Dorothy Waugh (1896–1996)
Architecture and design historian Christopher Long observed, “Dorothy Waugh is the greatest 20th-century American graphic designer no one knows about.” The relatively obscure artist, who recently had a dedicated show at Poster House in New York City, created prints promoting tourism to U.S. National Parks from 1934 to 1936 that were fused with Art Deco typography, streamlined design, and innovative color schemes, helping define the era’s travel aesthetic. Waugh was given considerable creative independence in her designs for this work, a luxury often not afforded to female illustrators of the era. In 1937, she pivoted from poster illustrations to leading Alfred A. Knopf’s children’s books division. The multitalented illustrator, landscape architect, and author lived a quiet private life until her passing at age 99.
Tamara de Lempicka ‘Deux femmes,’ 1974. Watercolor on paper. 13-1/4 x 9-3/8 inches (33.7 x 23.8 cm). Sold for $13,750 in a May 2021 Heritage auction.
Tamara de Lempicka (1898–1980)
Born in Warsaw, Poland, Tamara de Lempicka spent her working life in France and the United States, where she became known for highly stylized paintings of nudes and Art Deco portraits of aristocrats and celebrities that drew on characteristics of cubism and neoclassicism. Popular with the rich and famous of her own time, de Lempicka also has contemporary fans in Madonna, Barbra Streisand, and Jack Nicholson. Never a shrinking violet, the artist once described herself thusly: “I was the first woman to make clear paintings, and that was the origin of my success … Among a hundred canvases, mine were always recognizable. The galleries tended to show my pictures in the best rooms, because they attracted people. My work was clear and finished.”
Zofia Stryjeńska ‘Seasons. November-December (Procession I — with a stag),’ 1925. National Museum in Warsaw. Public domain.
Zofia Stryjeńska (1891-1976)
A contemporary and peer of de Lempicka, Polish-born painter, illustrator, and set designer Zofia Stryjeńska was also known for her Art Deco style. Recognizing her artistic talent from an early age, she defied early 20th-century gender inequity norms by defiantly taking on the name of her brother and posing as a boy to gain acceptance to the Academy of Fine Arts, Munich, returning to Kraków a year later when fellow students began to question her identity. Despite being lauded as “the princess of Polish art” and being awarded by the Polish government in the 1930s, Stryjeńska later refused to join the Communist-run Polish Writers’ Union, and because of this, official policy was to ignore her as an artist. She lived a modest life in Geneva until her death, and only in recent decades has her work been properly celebrated with a 2008 retrospective at the National Museum in Kraków and growing auction market interest.
Bernard Silberstein ‘Frida Kahlo Painting a Self Portrait, with Diego Rivera,’ circa 1940. Gelatin silver print, printed later. 17 x 14 inches (43.2 x 35.6 cm). Sold for $5,125 in a May 2025 Heritage auction.
Frida Kahlo (1907–1954)
Frida Kahlo is known for her many self-portraits, still lifes, and paintings inspired by the landscape of her native Mexico. Although she is often associated with the Surrealist movement, she rejected the label, saying, “I never painted dreams. I painted my own reality.” Often working alongside her husband, painter Diego Rivera, in both Mexico and the United States, Kahlo staged her first and only solo exhibition in 1953 at the Galería de Arte Contemporáneo in Mexico City, despite her rapidly declining health. Kahlo’s greatest notoriety came decades after her untimely passing at age 47 in 1954. In November 2025, she shattered records with the $54.7 million sale of her 1940 self-portrait El sueño (La cama), making hers the highest auction price ever achieved for a work by a female artist.
Louise Bourgeois ‘Paris Review,’ 1994. Aquatint and drypoint in colors on Somerset paper. 36-3/4 x 27-1/2 inches (93.3 x 69.8 cm) (sheet). Ed. 9/35 (aside from 10 artist’s proofs). Sold for $15,625 in an October 2025 Heritage auction.
Louise Bourgeois (1911–2010)
A pioneering force in modern art, Louise Bourgeois spent her career exploring complex symbols of family, sexuality, death, and womanhood. Best known for her monumental spider sculptures — metaphors for both maternal strength and vulnerability — Bourgeois abandoned an education in mathematics to pursue a professional art career after losing her mother in 1932. Throughout her long life, she advocated for human rights and in the 1970s became a member of the Fight Censorship Group, a feminist anti-censorship collective founded by fellow artist Anita Steckel, and later defended marriage equality. In her work, Bourgeois explored femininity through the lens of maternal protection rather than idealized or romanticized depictions of women.
Margaret Keane ‘Portrait of Zsa Zsa Gabor.’ Oil on canvas. 21-1/4 x 17-1/8 inches (sight). Sold for $45,000 in an April 2018 Heritage auction.
Margaret Keane (1927-2022)
For years, Margaret Keane’s commercially successful wide-eyed portraits were attributed to her then-husband, Walter Keane. After the couple divorced in the 1960s, she claimed the rightful credit. Keane’s life and work saw a resurgence of interest following the 2014 release of Tim Burton’s biopic Big Eyes. In 2018, a Margaret Keane portrait of Zsa Zsa Gabor achieved $45,000 at a Heritage Auctions sale of the actress’ estate, and her work continues to stand as a bridge between fine art, illustration, and cultural history.
Judy Chicago ‘Untitled (Three circles).’ Sprayed acrylic lacquer on acrylic. 27 x 27 inches (68.6 x 68.6 cm). Sold for $13,750 in a May 2018 Heritage auction.
Judy Chicago (b. 1939)
Known for her large-scale collaborative art installations, Judy Chicago notably explores the impact of women in history and culture. Her most famous work, The Dinner Party, which is permanently installed at the Brooklyn Museum, celebrates the accomplishments of women — both historical and mythical — and is widely regarded as the first epic feminist artwork. It combines crafts like textiles, ceramics, and embroidery, which have historically been dismissed as “women’s work,” and elevates them to a high art form. A longtime supporter of women’s rights, Chicago founded the first feminist art program in the United States at California State University, Fresno, which acted as a catalyst for a broader feminist art education movement in the 1970s.
Amy Sherald ‘Listen, You a Wonder. You a City of a Woman. You got a Geography of Your Own,’ 2021. Fine bone china. 10-3/4 inches (27.3 cm) diameter. Edition of 250. Sold for $1,062 in an October 2024 Heritage auction.
Amy Sherald (b. 1973)
With themes of self-identity, visibility, and dignity — especially for Black women — Amy Sherald’s stylized figurative paintings insist that women in everyday scenarios deserve the scale and reverence once reserved for aristocrats and political figures. Her use of grisaille, a technique employing a grayish neutral to portray skin tones, intentionally challenges conventions about race. Sherald’s acclaimed 2018 portrait of former First Lady Michelle Obama made her the first female African American artist to receive a commission from the Smithsonian’s National Portrait Gallery for a presidential-related portrait.
