(Poland-France, 18/01/1882 - 17/03/1949) Born in Białystok, then part of the Russian Empire, Exter came of age at a moment of radical artistic transformation. After graduating from Kyiv Art School in 1906 she travelled to Paris to study at the Grande Chaumière Academy where she moved fluidly across stylistic borders, becoming a crucial conduit between the artistic innovations of Western Europe and the emerging Modernism of Eastern Europe and Russia.    In Paris, she encounter

(Ukraine-United States of America, 23/09/1899 - 17/04/1988)  At just 10 years old, Nevelson had already declared her intention to become a professional sculptor and make a career of her favourite childhood toys – the scrap pieces of wood she found at the lumber yard her father operated after the family emigrated from Kyiv to the U.S. in 1905. Moving to New York in 1920, her career began by studying visual and performing art at the Art Students League, although her artistic ou

(Germany-United States of America, 11/01/1936 - 29/05/1970) Born in Hamburg, to a Jewish family in 1936, Hesse and her sister were sent to the Netherlands when she was just two years old in an effort to avoid Nazi persecution. Reunited with her family six months later, they eventually settled in New York City where she began her artistic training in 1950. Enrolling in classes at the School of Industrial Art, and later briefly studying at the Pratt Institute, she eventually ea

(Turkey, 07/01/1901 - 05/09/1991) Born Fahrünnisa Şakir in 1901 to an elite Ottoman family, Zeid’s father was a prominent intellectual and diplomat who raised her in an environment steeped in literature, music, intellect and art, and encouraged the pursuit of her creative expression when she began painting and drawing at the age of 14. After beginning her artistic education in 1928 at the Académie Ranson in Paris, she returned to Istanbul the following year and enrolled in cl

(Spain, 05/01/1902 - 06/02/1995) Born Ana María Gómez González in 1912, Mallo grew up between coastal landscapes and urban environments that would provide early encouragement for her avant-garde experimentation, poetic symbolism and radical reimagining of the modern subject — particularly the modern woman. At once rigorous and exuberant, her work places her among the central protagonists of Spain’s Generation of ’27, even as her legacy long remained overshadowed by exile and

(England, 05/01/1893 - 22/12/1975) Known mononymously as Yevonde, her use of colour photography and bold reimagining of portraiture was modern, theatrical and entirely unlike anything being produced by her contemporaries, leading to her photographs remaining striking, even today. Her performative approach to identity, refusal to conform to expectation and confident use of colour photography at a time when it was dismissed, continue to resonate with modern audiences. As both a

(Italy-England, 11/06/1760 - 05/01/1838) Born Maria Luisa Caterina Cecilia Hadfield in Florence, Cosway was raised at the crossroads of European culture, diplomacy and art, leading to her becoming one of the most cosmopolitan and intellectually ambitious artists of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. Her father, an amateur art dealer, and her mother both encouraged her precocious artistic talents, enrolling her in drawing, painting and music classes from an ea

(Cuba, 05/01/1896 - 08/04/1968) Born in Yaguajay, Cuba, Peláez del Casal moved with her family to Havana when she was 20 years old and quickly enrolled at the Academia Nacional de Bellas Artes San Alejandro, where she received a rigorous academic training that emphasised drawing and composition. While her early works reflect this foundation, they also reveal a restless curiosity and an emerging desire to move beyond such academic conventions, an ambition that would soon lead

(Tanzania-England, 1954 - ) Widely regarded as a central figure in the British Black Arts Movement of the 1980s, Himid’s work as an artist, curator and cultural activist has profoundly shaped the landscape of contemporary art in the United Kingdom and beyond. Having spent more than four decades interrogating histories of race, representation, erasure and power, she has continuously created vital spaces for artists of African and Caribbean descent to be seen and celebrated.   

(Finland, 03/09/1861 - 31/12/1919) As one of the most accomplished Finnish painters of her generation, Danielson-Gambogi’s keen observational eye and compositional clarity, resulted in a body of work that bridges Realism, Naturalism and early Impressionist sensibilities to portray modern life with psychological depth. Born in 1861 in Noormarkku, Danielson-Gambogi demonstrated artistic promise at a young age and pursued formal training at fifteen years old when she enrolled in

(Australia, 11/01/1911 - 30/12/2003) Growing up in an environment steeped in artistic curiosity, from a young age, Heysen was encouraged to take up drawing and painting, and was raised to maintain a disciplined observation of nature. As the daughter of a celebrated artist, public perception of her work was inevitably shaped by her father’s reputation, but nevertheless, she refined her handling of colour and light in order to develop a distinctive voice of her own that led her

(United States of America, 12/12/1928 - 27/12/2011) One of the most influential figures in postwar art, Frankenthaler’s innovations reshaped the possibilities of Abstraction and permanently altered the course of artistic expression. Born in New York City, Frankenthaler grew up in an intellectually vibrant environment that encouraged independent thinking and artistic exploration. In 1945, she began studying art at Bennington College where she was exposed to both Modernist theo

(United States of America, 1885 - 26/12/1968) Born in Philadelphia in 1885, Sparhawk-Jones came of age during a period of profound transformation for American art, when traditional realism was giving way to Impressionist experimentation with colour, form and psychological depth which reconceptualising the meaning and purpose of art itself. Emerging as a distinctive voice within this shifting landscape, her work bridges the technical assurance of academic training with the emo

(France-United States of America, 25/12/1911 - 31/05/2010) One of the most influential and psychologically resonant artists of the twentieth and early twenty-first centuries, Bourgeois’s career spanned more than seven decades, throughout which time, she produced a profoundly personal body of work that explored memory, sexuality, fear, intimacy and the complexities of family relationships. Working across sculpture, drawing, printmaking, installation and textile, Bourgeois tran

(Algeria, 12/12/1931 - 09/11/1998) Fatma Haddad, known as Baya Mahieddine, or simply Baya, was born in Bordj el Kiffan in 1931 and grew up impoverished after being orphaned at five years old. Receiving no formal education, it was through her innate creativity that she blended elements of Modernism and North African visual culture into a body of work that defied conventional artistic categorisation and reshaped twentieth-century conversations around Modernism, gender and cultu

(Canada-United States of America, 22/03/1912 - 16/12/2004) Born on a farm in rural Canada, Martin spent her childhood on the Canadian prairies before immigrating with her family to the United States in 1931 when she was 19 years old. Initially intending to become an art teacher, she received a degree in teaching from Western Washington University before moving to Taos, New Mexico. Here, she began making Abstract paintings with organic forms and eventually developed her distin

(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