cover image Women Artists: An Illustrated History

Women Artists: An Illustrated History

Nancy G. Heller. Abbeville Press, $45 (224pp) ISBN 978-0-89659-748-8

That women artists were influential in nearly every phase of Western art becomes evident from this engrossing study. In our century, Sonia Delaunay, Paula Modersohn-Becker and Natalya Goncharova helped shape modern ""-isms.'' Berthe Morisot and Mary Cassatt were in the forefront of the impressionists' fight to change the nature of painting. Realistic scenes of 19th century working-class life by French genre painter Francoise Duparc were revolutionary for her time. Ranging from the Italian Fede Galizia, a pioneer of still-life painting, to American sculptor Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney and photorealist Audrey Flack, this survey scans the contributions of scores of women artists whose works generally have been neglected or downplayed. Among the histories of women artists currently available, this one stands out for its unsurpassed color reproductions. Heller, who lectures on art in Washington, D.C., writes here about the obstacles creative women have faced from the Renaissance to the present. (November)