The first woman to join the French Impressionist movement was the painter Berthe Morisot (1841-1895). The well-known art critic Gustave Geffroy showed his admiration for her work in his “History of Impressionism”, describing her as one of “the three ladies of Impressionism”, along with Mary Cassatt and Marie Bracquemond.
Belonging to an upper class family, Berthe Morisot was able to educate herself in the art world, so at the age of 20 she met Camille Corot, a great landscaper who had her as an apprentice and introduced her to artistic circles.
Later she was a model and friend of Manet, as well as sister-in-law, when she married her brother Eugène Manet. He had a prominent role in the development of Impressionism and exhibited alongside them.
At a time when women were mainly concerned with painting in an amateurish way, Morisot had the determination to make a career as a painter and she succeeded. In fact, he exhibited alongside Renoir, Monet, Degas, Pissarro or Sysley.
Family scenes are rich with the theme, usually female characters in gardens, indoors or everyday scenes. That is why many critics considered it a ‘painting of women’. Yet his work shows great audacity, a very expressive and impressive brushstroke.
“Behind Breakfast” he managed to break Christie’s London records, but while colleagues like Monet, Renoir and Degas were considered the great Impressionists, Morisot was left out of the story.
CAMOMILE CLAUDEL, THE SPARROW OF RODIN AND GREAT SCULPTOR
Although her story was a mixture of love and passion for sculpture, Camille Claudel (1864-1943) is remembered more as a muse and lover of the great Auguste Rodin than for her powerful work.
Camille Claudel was the sister of the poet Paul Claudel, and her decision to devote herself to sculpture, along with her desire for freedom, turned her very conservative family upside down. Camille attended the Academy under the direction of the sculptor Alfred Boucher and became independent a year later. In 1883, at the age of 19, he met Rodin, twenty-four years his senior. Rodin was fascinated by her spectacular talent and beauty. He takes her as a student, model and soon as a lover.
From 1886, Rodin and Camille rent and share a workshop where they work as equals, but outside of it Camille was the sculptor’s lover and despite the fact that the criticism of his works was good, they always saw the ‘help’ of the sculptor when exhibiting. teacher.
Works like “Sakountala, Clotho”, allegory of old age and death or “El Vals” (1895), in which a few dancer enthusiasts seem to come to life, justify their determination to be recognized.
Rodin’s genius darkens her, she feels humiliated; Love and artistic jealousy increased (he will never leave his wife) and the last breakthrough came in 1898. This year the sculpture group “The adult age” ends in bronze, a shocking allegory formed by three figures. In 1905 he made his last large sculpture “El Abandono”, a harbinger of his own life.
She abandons herself, lives dangerously and alone, paranoia appears, she believes that Rodin is stealing her ideas, that he is planning to kill her. All his anger is directed at him and comes to destroy many of his works with hammer blows.
In 1913 her father, her protector, died and that same month her mother placed her in a sanitarium. The following year she went to an asylum, where she lived in obscurity for the last 30 years of her life, completely isolated by her family, who not only denied her reception of visitors, but never listened to the doctors who advised them, given her lucidity should take her home.
“An unjust fine,” she wrote, “that lasted until her death. Her biographers say that no one visited her except her brother six times, and that when she died no one came, so she had to be buried in a common grave like others ‘forgotten’. However, his work is exhibited at the Rodin Museum in Paris.
POPOVA, GREAT RUSSIAN CONSTRUCTIVISM
In connection with the revolutionary avant-gardes and Soviet constructivism, Liubov Popova, (1889 – 1924), the «artist-constructor», as her contemporaries called her, was one of the foremost defenders of abstract art in Russia and one of the most prominent figures in Russia at the forefront of the early twentieth century.
During a trip to Italy, he encountered the “Futurism” movement and his work began to reflect its influence, along with certain aspects of Cubism.
In 1915 he took part in the futuristic exhibitions and, influenced by Malevich’s suprematism, joined the Federation of the Left Federation of the Moscow Artists Union in 1918 and was already a member of the Institute of Artistic Culture (Injuk) in 1920 from Kandinsky.
A year later he signed a manifesto for the abandonment of easel painting, stating that “the organization of the elements of artistic production must return to shaping the material elements of life, to industry, what we call production” from 1922 he focused on textile and graphic design and theatrical scenography. His untimely death at the age of 35 ended his intense career.
LOUISE BOURGEOIS, “THE SPIDER WOMAN”
If there was a driving force in the prolific career of Louise Bourgeois (1911–2010), it was the fear, pain, fear and insecurity, emotions or trauma that she dragged from childhood to later make it her original creation .
Born in Paris and a nationalized American, she was one of the foremost artists in contemporary art. She went through surrealism and abstract expressionism … to be known for her large spider sculptures. The largest is “Maman”, almost ten meters high.
And it is that his spiders, in tribute to his mother, who was a weaver, who represents duplicity representing nature and motherhood – that mother, who is simultaneously a protector and a predator – ideas that forged his artistic identity. His works refer to the human figure and express themes such as betrayal, loneliness, childhood trauma, as he said when he found out that his father was unfaithful to his nanny.
Bourgeois spoke out for equality for lesbian, gay, LGTBI, and created the play “I do” in support of same-sex marriage in 2010. He died that same year in New York at the age of 98. His last pieces were finished just a few weeks before his death. In 2011, one of her works entitled “Spider” was sold at auction for $ 10.7 million, setting the record for the highest price paid for a woman’s work.
GEORGIA O’KEEFFE AND ABSTRACT NATURE
Through abstractions of nature, flowers and landscapes, Georgia O’Keeffe (1887-1986) expressed herself, a pioneer of contemporary American art, trained at the Chicago School of Art and in New York, where she met her husband , the gallery owner and photographer Alfred Stieglitz.
He lived between Hawaii and Mexico until he chose the latter, where he settled until his death at the age of 98. However, after a long life and a great work full of color and vibrant shapes, she is not known to the general public, despite receiving awards as a member of the American Academy of Arts, the Presidential Medal of Freedom or the Medal. the art.
SONIA DELAUNAY, PIONEER WITH HER HUSBAND OF ABSTRACT ART
Born in Ukraine and raised in Saint Petersburg (Russia), Sonia Delaunay (1885-1979) had a cosmopolitan upbringing. In 1905 he expanded his education in Paris, where he met the artistic avant-gardes and the French painter Robert Delaunay, whom he married in 1910.
From then on, the artistic exchange of the Delaunay couple, pioneers of abstract art, was intense until they developed Orphism or Simultaneism, an artistic trend that uses light and bright colors as a means of creating space and shapes.
In the 1920s he had a close relationship with the surrealists and collaborated with them in the production of visual projects.