Sophie Taeuber-Arp was a Swiss artist, painter, sculptor, textile designer and dancer. She was one of the foremost figures of the Dada art movement, and is considered one of the most important artists of concrete art and geometric abstraction of the 20th century. Taeuber-Arp was born in 1889 in Davos, Switzerland. She studied art at …
Jenny Holzer is an American installation and conceptual feminist artist who is best known for her use of original or borrowed text to create public works of art using LED signs and light projections. Holler was born in 1950 in Gallipolis, Ohio. She intended to become an abstract painter, and studied art at Duke University …
Barbara Hepworth DBE was an English artist and modernist sculptor. She was a leading figure in the international art scene with a career spanning five decades. Hepworth was born in 1903 in Wakefield, Yorkshire. She studied at Leeds College of Art, where she became friends with Henry Moore. Hepworth then continued her education at the Royal …
Barbara Kruger is an American feminist conceptual artist who challenges cultural assumptions by manipulating images and text in her photographic compositions. She is best known for her print Untitled (Your body is a battleground) (1989) which uses her signature style of a black and white photograph with red and white text. The image was designed …
Ava DuVernay is an American director, screenwriter, film marketer, and film distributor. She is best known for ‘Selma’, which chronicles Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s leadership in the struggle for voting rights. She is the first African-American woman to win the Best Director Prize at Sundance, the first female director to receive a Golden Globe …
Alison Bechdel is an acclaimed author and illustrator known for her graphic novel ‘Fun Home’, and the Bechdel test, an indicator of gender bias in film. Bechdel was born in 1960 in Lock Haven, Pennsylvania to Helen and Bruce Bechdel who taught at the local high school. Her father also worked as a funeral director …
Beatrix Potter was an English author, illustrator, natural scientist, and conservationist. She wrote and illustrated more than 20 children’s books featuring the animals Peter Rabbit, Jemima Puddle-Duck, and Benjamin Bunny. Potter was born in 1866 in London. Her father Rupert had trained as a lawyer but devoted himself to art and photography, her mother Helen …
Marjane Satrapi is an Iranian-born French graphic novelist, illustrator, film director, and children’s book author. She is best known for her graphic novel Persepolis, which provide an insight into life in Iran during the Iranian Revolution of the early 80’s. Satrapi was born in 1969 in Rasht, Iran and grew up in Tehran. Her parents …
Katherine Murray “Kate” Millett is an American feminist writer, educator, artist, and activist. She is an acknowledged leader of the modern women’s movement. Millett was born in 1934 in Saint Paul, Minnesota to James Albert and Helen Feely Millett. The family’s background was Irish Catholic, and Kate attended several parochial schools. Her father was an …
Dame Vivienne Westwood is an English fashion designer and businesswoman whose early designs helped shape the look of the punk rock movement. Westwood was born Vivienne Isabel Swire in 1941 in Tintwistle, England. Her parents, Gordon and Dora Swire had married two years previously, two weeks after the outbreak of World War II. Westwood attended …