Abstract Expressionism is often presented as a story of heroic male artists, large canvases and New York’s post-war rise as an international art centre. That…
Joan Mitchell made paintings that seem to exceed the limits of the wall. Across broad fields of colour, her brushwork gathers speed, breaks apart, and returns…
The Venus of Willendorf is one of the most recognisable prehistoric objects in the history of art. Carved from oolitic limestone around 29,000 to 25,000 BCE,…
Alma Thomas’s paintings invite a different kind of attention. Their small, repeated marks gather into radiant fields of colour, suggesting flowers, galaxies,…
Few sculptural figures of the twentieth century have communicated joy as directly as the Nanas of Niki de Saint Phalle. First appearing in the early 1960s,…
Suzanne Valadon did not paint women to be looked at. She painted them to be seen. In a Parisian art world saturated with the languid, pearl-skinned nudes of…
Miriam Schapiro helped change the story of modern art by bringing domestic materials into serious critical discussion. Fabric, embroidery, lace, ribbon and…
When Georgia O'Keeffe first rode through the dry hills of northern New Mexico in 1929, she encountered a landscape that felt ancient and exposed. The bleached…
Berthe Morisot is often introduced as the “forgotten” Impressionist, yet that label can conceal the scale of her achievement. She was a founding participant in…
Claude Cahun used the camera as a theatre of identity. Across portraits, photomontages and carefully constructed scenes, Cahun transformed the self into a…
