(France, 29/08/1884 - 23/11/1980) Juliette Roche was a French painter and writer whose work bridged several of the most transformative currents of early twentieth-century Modernism. Born into an influential Parisian family, her father, Jules Roche, was a prominent politician and her mother came from a distinguished lineage of art patrons and collectors. Growing up in this environment, Roche was immersed in a cultural milieu that encouraged intellectual independence and artist

(Argentina-England, 01/12/1899 - 17/11/1991) Born in Buenos Aires to a prosperous Anglo-Argentine family, Agar moved to England at the age of six where she quickly found herself drawn to art. During the First World War, she studied oil painting at the Byam Shaw School of Art but found the medium too academic and so, beginning in 1920, started taking classes at the more progressive Slade School of Fine Art. Here, she not only expanded her technical skills into a Modernist sens

(France, 22/11/1907 - 16/07/1997) Born Henriette Markovitch, Maar was raised in Argentina where her father was working as an architect. From this early introduction to artistic principles, she developed an instinct for observation and visual form that would define her career spanning photography, painting, sculpture and poetry. At the age of 19, she and her family returned to her mother’s home town of Paris where she started taking classes at the Académie Julian and later stu

( United States of America, 28/03/1922 - 15/11/2008) Born in Newark, New Jersey, and raised in a family that didn’t view her femininity as a limitation, from a young age Hartigan was determined to create greatness and refused to make herself small or compromise on her desires to make that happen. Throughout WW2, Hartigan worked as a mechanical draftsman in an aerorplane factory while taking night courses at the local engineering college. It was during this time that she first

(Canada, 15/11/1923 - 20/06/2015) As a pioneering force in contemporary art, Schapiro’s work reshaped the boundaries of painting, feminist art and collaborative practice and forged a radical visual language that united Modernist Abstraction with materials and techniques traditionally associated with women’s domestic labour. Born in Toronto and raised in New York City, Schapiro demonstrated early artistic promise and studied at Hunter College in New York City beginning in 1943

(Ukraine-France, 14/11/1885 - 05/12/1979) Born Sarah Stern in what is now Odessa, Ukraine, she was adopted by her affluent uncle following her parents’ death in 1890 and moved to St. Petersburg, where she received a private education and early exposure to the arts. At the age of 16, she began taking formal drawing classes where her notable talent was first noticed and led to her enrollment at the Academy of Fine Arts in Karlsruhe, Germany. In 1905, Delaunay moved to Paris whe

(Ukraine-United States of America, 31/05/1893 - 11/11/1968) Janet Sobel was a Ukrainian-born American painter whose pioneering approach to Abstraction positioned her as a vital yet long-overlooked figure in twentieth-century art. Born Jennie Lechovsky in Ekaterinoslav (now Dnipro), Ukraine, Sobel immigrated with her family to the United States in 1908, settling in Brooklyn, New York. For much of her early life, she devoted herself to family and domestic duties, only beginning

(Czechia, 21/09/1902 - 09/11/1980) Born Marie Čermínová in 1902 in Prague, Toyen was a founding member of Czech Surrealism and a radical innovator within both the avant-garde and feminist traditions, she forged a visual language that defied conventions of gender, sexuality and politics. Adopting the gender-neutral pseudonym ‘Toyen’ (believed to derive from the French ‘citoyen’, or ‘citizen’) and using masculine grammatical forms in Czech, she fashioned her own identity in a c

(England, 09/11/1881 - 1937) Often overlooked by the canon of art history, Layng’s luminous compositions and quiet psychological depth place her among the most intriguing artists of early twentieth-century Britain. Working at the intersection of classical training and modern sensibility, Layng brought a distinctive sensitivity to the representation of women’s lives, balancing intimacy and restraint with a subtle modernity that reflected the shifting roles of women in her era.

(Switzerland, 30/10/1741 - 05/11/1807) Born in Switzerland in 1741, Kauffman’s father, the Austrian painter Johann Joseph Kauffman, recognised her gifts early and became her first teacher, providing rigorous instruction in drawing and painting. The family’s frequent travels through Switzerland, Austria and Italy exposed her to a breadth of artistic traditions and developed her prodigious talent, and, by her teenage years, she had already began receiving commissions from membe

In art history, and Western society in general, external beauty is equated with moral, social, economic and political success, with the qualifying features for what is considered beautiful being determined by, and for, the male gaze. Given that art’s spectator is presumed to always be a man, his idyllic gaze is pandered to in artworks that, to be considered art, must always agree with his definition of beauty. It is for this reason that in portraits of men, beauty is drawn fr

(France, 31/10/1883 - 08/06/1956) Born and raised in Paris, Laurencin began her artistic education at the age of 18, enrolling in porcelain painting classes at the renowned Ecole de Manufacture de Sèvres before taking private classes in fine art painting at l’Academie Humbert in Paris starting in 1904. Here, she met Francis Picabia and Georges Braque, and established connections that placed her squarely within the orbit of the emergent Cubist milieu. After receiving her first

(France-United States of America, 29/10/1930 - 21/05/2002) Encompassed painting, sculpture, installation, performance, architecture and public art, Saint Phalle’s audacious innovation allowed her to engage deeply with social and political themes central to the Feminist art movement and forge a unique artist language where intimacy and monumentality meet. Born Catherine-Marie-Agnès Fal de Saint Phalle in Neuilly-sur-Seine, France, her childhood was spent between France and the