5 inspirational Female Artists
Art history is full of familiar faces, but beyond the headlines are women whose work shaped entire movements without ever becoming household names.
This piece is a chance to meet five extraordinary female artists whose stories you may not know, but won’t forget. From spiritual abstraction to bold minimalism and radical storytelling, each brought something essential—and enduring—to the canvas.
1. Hilma af Klint (Sweden, 1862–1944)
Before Kandinsky. Before Mondrian. Before abstract art had a name—Hilma af Klint was already painting it.
She believed her art was guided by spiritual forces and created over 1,200 works exploring geometry, mysticism, and the unseen. But because the art world wasn’t ready to accept a woman pioneering abstraction, her work remained hidden until decades after her death.
Today, af Klint’s work is finally receiving global attention—and rewriting the story of modern art.
2. Amrita Sher-Gil (India/Hungary, 1913–1941)
Often called India’s Frida Kahlo, Amrita Sher-Gil was a fearless modernist whose paintings bridged Indian traditions and European expressionism.
She depicted Indian women not as passive subjects but as thinking, feeling beings. Her work challenged colonial perspectives and captured the inner lives of people long flattened into stereotypes.
She died at just 28, but her legacy runs deep. In India, she’s a national treasure. Elsewhere? Still criminally under-known.
3. Lee Krasner (USA, 1908–1984)
For years, Lee Krasner was known as Jackson Pollock’s wife. In reality, she was an artistic powerhouse in her own right.
Her abstract expressionist work was dynamic, intuitive, and bold. She edited, destroyed, and reassembled her own pieces to push them further—long before collage was trendy.
Krasner’s work was eclipsed in her lifetime by her husband’s fame. But posthumously, she’s finally being seen as a major force in abstract art—not a footnote.
4. Carmen Herrera (Cuba/USA, 1915–2022)
Carmen Herrera sold her first major piece at 89.
Despite painting for decades with a striking minimalist style that rivalled her male contemporaries, Herrera was ignored by galleries because, in her own words, she was “a woman, a Cuban, and too ahead of her time.”
Her precise, geometric compositions demand presence. Her story? A reminder that talent doesn’t expire—but recognition can come late.
5. Lubaina Himid (UK, b. 1954)
A Turner Prize winner and a powerful voice in British art, Lubaina Himid has spent her career exploring themes of identity, colonialism, and Black British history.
Her work blends painting, installation, and theatre to ask difficult questions—and to give space to stories long erased from the cultural landscape. Despite her accolades, she still doesn’t have the household name status her male peers enjoy.