On the occasion of Tate’s latest show ‘Now You See Us ‘, Liss llewellyn is delighted to present a special online exhibition of work by Women Artists.
This includes a selection of work by trailblazing women, whose journeys to becoming professional artists necessitated them navigating the obstacles of the patriarchal Art Establishment. The exhibition includes drawings by Winifred Knights – the first woman to win the Prix de Rome scholarship in 1920 – as well as a youthful self-portrait by Evelyn Dunbar, who became the first female War Artist on a full-time salary.
Other artists featured include Marion Adnams and Edith Rimmington, both of whom made significant contributions to the predominantly male space of British Surrealism. The exhibition additionally includes a canvas by pioneering abstract artist Esphyr Slobodkina, who as the first artist in America to paint non figuratively, might arguably be considered in the same canon as better-known Abstract artists Josef Albers, Willem de Kooning, and Jackson Pollock.
The exhibition also highlights the continued plight of female artists, even after they have achieved some success. This was true of Hilda Carline, whose promising career faltered after her turbulent marriage to Stanley Spencer in 1925. And so too of Frances Richards, whose propensity to work on a small scale (and reclaim the traditional art of embroidery as a modernist project) was in part a result of working from the kitchen table.