For Women's History Month, it is not only the female artists within the art world that inspire us, but also the women that have had a profound impact on the art world. Whether they are architects, artistic muses or aficionados, we have created a short list below of some of these remarkable women.
Peggy Guggenheim
Peggy Guggenheim. 1948.
Copyright: The Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation
Peggy Guggenheim, world famous American art collector and bohemian is most notably remembered for her vast art collection of modern art, with a penchant for the avant-garde accumulated between 1938 and 1946. Her good friend and artist Marcel Duchamp introduced her to many artists and taught her to recognise the difference between surrealist art and abstract art. Their influence had a profound impact on her love and understanding of art and in 1938 she opened the Guggenheim Jeune in London marking the start of her extensive career. One of her many shows at Guggenheim Jeune included the first-ever solo show of Vasily Kandinsky in England.
She continued exhibiting and collecting art throughout Europe and the US, meeting many famous artists and collectors of the time. In 1948 her immense collection was shown for the very first time at the Venice Biennale, a city which she felt a great affinity towards. This exhibition allowed artists such as Mark Rothko and Jackson Pollock to exhibit their work in Europe for the first time. Not long afterwards, Peggy Guggenheim bought her home along the Grand Canal in Venice to house key pieces of her collection that could be viewed by the public every summer.
Her renowned collection of art still remains on display at her home which is now the Peggy Guggenheim Collection in Venice and one of the most visited attractions in all of Venice.
Marchesa Luisa Casati
Luisa Casati by Augustus John
We then have the enigmatic Marchesa Casati who served as a muse to countless artists during and after her lifetime. She famously proclaimed; “I want to be a living work of art” physically transforming from a reserved, wide-eyed young woman to a towering fiery haired creature capable of mythological acts of debauchery, vanity and excess. Artists were so entranced by both her image and legend that they sought to capture her essence. Her portrait was painted by Kees van Dougen, Augustus John and Giovanni Boldini, her photo taken by the Surrealist Man Ray and Cecil Beaton and her likeness carved in bronze by Jacob Epstein and Paolo Troubetzkoy. After years of lavish parties that took its toll on the Marchesa's finances, she retired to London. Her home, Palazzo Venier dei Leoni in Venice, was later bought by art collector Peggy Guggenheim, which has become a museum housing Guggenheim's modern masterpieces.
Elizabeth Siddal
Elizabeth Siddal as "Beata Beatrix' by Dante Gabriel Rossetti
Although an artist in her own right, Elizabeth Siddal is predominantly known as a favourite model and muse to several Pre-Raphaelite painters. Her image adorns many paintings by her husband Dante Gabriel Rossetti, after first being discovered by his fellow painter Walter Deverell. Arguably her most famous sitting was for his friend John Everett Millais’ interpretation of the tragic Shakespearian character ‘Ophelia’. With Rossetti's help and tutelage, Siddal earnt the patronage of the influential art critic John Ruskin, going on to exhibit alongside her husband and his colleagues in prominent Pre-Raphaelite shows.
Her husband’s artistic career took precedence over her own, however and Siddal was often forced to stop work due to her poor health, often inflicted by Rossetti's numerous affairs with his models and their tumultuous relationship. She died of a laudanum overdose at the age of 32. The devastated Rosetti, so haunted by her image produced his most famous painting of her several years after her death ’Beata Beatrix’, portraying her as Dante Alighieri's unrequited muse Beatrice.
Zaha Hadid
Zaha Hadid photographed by Irving Penn
British-Iraqi architect, Dame Zaha Hadid was world famous for her incredible buildings which are like entire works of art. She was named by The Guardian newspaper as "the queen of the curve" due to the curvaceous and fluid nature of her designs and creations. She was the first woman to receive the Pritzker Architecture Prize in 2004 which is a prestigious award honouring an architect who has made significant and continued contributions to the built environment through the art of architecture.
She also received the UK's most respected architectural prize, the Stirling prize in 2010 and 2011 respectively. It was critical acclaim after acclaim for Hadid and in 2012 she was made a Dame by Queen Elizabeth II for her services to architecture. Some of her most notable creations include the Heydar Aliyev Centre in Baku, Azerbaijan, the Aquatic Centre for the London 2012 Olympics and the Guangzhou Opera House in China.
Lili Elbe and Gerda Wegener
Gerda and Einar Wegener in front of a painting by Gerda.
Danish married couple Gerda Wegener and Einar Wegener, were both artists living in Copenhagen in the early 1900s. Gerda was the lesser known artist to her landscape painter husband, preferring to illustrate women in an Art Nouveau style. It was only when Einar stepped in to replace one of Gerda's female models, that required him to wear heels and stockings, that his art took a backseat. He continued to model for Gerda, adopting the name and personality of Lili Elbe, who became his preferred self. The couple began frequenting parties posing as sister-in laws, and Gerda's paintings gained in popularity in Paris, where the couple had moved to.
Unable to suppress his female persona, Einar resigned himself to Lili, and became one of the first people to try sexual reassignment surgery, with the support of Gerda. After a few successful procedures, Lili was able to legally change her name and gender, and divorced Gerda, with the hopes of marrying a man. Lili gave up Einar's passion for painting, while Gerda's style slowly went out of fashion.
Their story has been recently told in the Oscar winning film 'The Danish Girl' and Gerda’s work has since been revived and acknowledged.
Maria Altmann
Maria Altmann in front of Gustav Klimt's portrait of her aunt 'Portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer I'
Maria Altmann was an Austrian-American Jewish refugee who was born to the Bloch-Bauer family, an affluent Jewish family that resided in Vienna. Her aunt and uncle, Adele and Ferdinand had close connections to members of the Vienna Succession, an art movement established by Gustav Klimt in 1897. Ferdinand commissioned Klimt to paint Adele for her parents, for what would become one of his most famous paintings "Portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer I". The painting was placed in their lavish Viennese home, where young Maria would come to admire the stunning portrait along with the couple's vast art collection.
In 1938, these precious family paintings were taken by the Nazis, when they seized control of Austria and sought to aryanize the capital. The beloved swirling golden portrait of her aunt was among the stolen paintings, and it was dubbed simply as "Woman in Gold". Under the most difficult circumstances, Maria and her husband Fredrick Altmann were forced to flee to the USA, starting a new life away from her home and her family. All that she had left with were the memories of her family's most beautiful paintings, and for many years after the war she presumed that the paintings had legally become the property of the Austrian National Gallery.
It wasn't until she was 82 that she was informed by an Austrian journalist that the paintings were in fact rightfully hers. After a long and anguishing legal battle against the Austrian government which was escalated as high as the Supreme Court, Maria Altmann won the case and was reunited with her paintings once more. To this day, the "Woman in Gold" how hangs at the Neue Gallery in New York's Manhattan.
This incredible story of the persecuted women reclaiming what is rightfully hers was made into a film called "Woman in Gold" which recognises what an inspirational and strong woman Maria Altmann was.
Elaine Sturtevant
Elaine Sturtevant
Thomas Lohnes/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images
The ultimate art fiend, post-modernist Sturtevant was famous for copying famous paintings from some of the biggest names in art; Roy Lichenstein, Marcel Duchamp and Jasper Johns. She labelled her approach 'repetition', recreating inexact replicas of some of the most famous modern artworks and studying the artist's methods for her own line of study.
Pop artist Andy Warhol allowed Sturtevant into his studio so that she could borrow his flower and Marilyn screen prints for her own appropriation. When asked about his silk-screen printing technique, he simply answered 'Ask Elaine' who by that time would have been just as masterful in the craft as himself. Warhol seemed to have supported her philosophy, given that his work consisted of copying pop culture, throwing it back into the public's face in multicolour. Her work may have been a comment on commercialism, questioning authenticity in the midst of a mass production of art for commerce. Sturtevant would later explore her own vision through various mediums, most notably video installation.
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