Here we list all the new books about women artists—from the past, and also from the present—that have come to our attention, published in the third quarter of this calendar year. Each description is drawn from the blurb on the publisher’s website. Do you know of other titles that should be on this list? Please let us know by comment or by email (Erika@artherstory.net).
For young readers
A Party for Florine: Florine Stettheimer and Me, by Yevgenia Nayberg, illustrated by Yevgenia Nayberg. Publisher: Penguin Random House / Neal Porter Books, 2024.
A young girl forms a special connection to the modernist painter Florine Stettheimer. She imagines herself joining in on Florine’s exciting life. A Party for Florine is an unapologetically whimsical fan letter to an artist whose influence is clear in Sydney Taylor Honoree Yevgenia Nayberg’s captivating illustrations. Dreamers, creators, and budding modernists will be drawn into the young protagonist’s party just as strongly as she is drawn into Stettheimer’s paintings.
Read a review of this book in Kirkus.
Wilhelmina Barnes-Graham: An Introduction to Her Life with Activities, by Kate Temple, illustrated by Annabel Wright. Publisher: The Wilhelmina Barns-Graham Trust, 2024.
Annabel Wright’s beautiful illustrations enrich this colourful activity book, introducing children to Wilhelmina Barns-Graham’s amazing long and productive life. A wide range of fun and engaging art activities explore particular ideas and themes in Barns-Graham’s work. The book also features high quality reproductions of key works by the artist. It aims to encourage children to explore ideas and develop their own creativity through art.
World More Beautiful: The Life & Art of Barbara Cooney, by Angela Burke Kunkel, illustrated by Becca Stadtlander. Publisher: Penguin Random House, 2024.
For every kid who loves art, here is the inspirational story of beloved illustrator and two-time Caldecott Medalist Barbara Cooney. When Barbara grew up, she ventured out into the world with an art portfolio. She thought she might like to illustrate books. And she did, creating classics like Miss Rumphius, Island Boy, and Hattie and the Waves. Her character Miss Rumphius said, you must do something to make the world more beautiful. And that is exactly what Barbara did. It’s a message that’s sure to inspire young readers and creators today.
Read a review of this book in Kirkus.
Fiction
The Paris Muse, by Louisa Treger. Publisher: Bloomsbury, 2024.
Dora Maar is a talented French photographer, painter and poet. When she is introduced to Pablo Picasso, she is mesmerized by his dark and intense stare. Drawn to his volcanic creativity, it isn’t long before she embarks on a passionate relationship with the Spanish artist. Ultimately the liaison pushes her to the edge. Set in Paris and the French Riviera, where Dora and Pablo spent holidays, The Paris Muse is the fictionalized retelling of this disturbing love story. Atmospheric, intense and moving, The Paris Muse is an astonishing read that ensures that this talented, often overlooked woman who gave her life to Picasso is no longer a footnote.
Adult non-fiction
Women Artists and Artisans in Venice and the Veneto, 1400–1750: Uncovering the Female Presence, Edited by Tracy Cooper. Publisher: Amsterdam University Press, 2024.
This book of essays highlights the lives, careers, and works of art of women artists and artisans in early modern Venice and its territories. The project is inspired by a growing body of research that resurrects female artists and artisans in Florence and Bologna. Contributors discuss such artists as Chiara Varotari, Artemisia Gentileschi, Giovanna Garzoni, Caterina Tarabotti, Giulia Lama and Rosalba Carriera. Topics include their contemporary reception—or historical silence—and current scholarship. The authors present these women as individuals and as an underrepresented category in the history of art and cultural heritage.
The collection represents the first fruits of an ongoing research program launched by Save Venice, Inc., Women Artists of Venice. The program is directed by Professor Tracy Cooper of Temple University, in conjunction with a conservation program, led by Melissa Conn, Director of Save Venice, Inc. Download the open access version of the book here.
The Art of Anna Dorothea Therbusch (1721–1782), by Christina Lindeman. Publisher: Amsterdam University Press, 2024.
The study is the first English-language monograph on Anna Dorothea Therbusch. It critically examines Therbusch’s artworks and career as a history and mythological painter, portraitist, and maker of synthetic pigments. Complementing scholarship on French, British, Italian, and Swiss 18th-century women painters, this book showcases practices of court cultures beyond France. The focus is on German-speaking Europe and how a provocative woman painter navigated within them. Meticulous archival and literary research sheds new light on the importance of the family atelier as a place of networking, collaboration, and experimentation. The book provides a fresh perspective on Prussian intellectual and mercantilist cultures and their impact on Therbusch’s artistic production. It also explores the unavoidable fluency between painting, the minor or luxury arts, and the laboratory.
Mabel Nicholson, by Lucy Davies. Publisher: Eiderdown Books, 2024.
Mabel Pryde Nicholson was a portraitist of great skill and tenderness, working mainly within the compass of family life. The first wife of the eminent Edwardian painter William Nicholson, her story has been told as a footnote to his, or to those of her famous children, the abstract artist Ben and architect Kit. In fact, Mabel was a free-spirited young girl, an adventurous and well-travelled woman and key to a glittering Bohemian circle. And, as this new book reveals, she is one of the most significantly overlooked talents of early 20th century British art.
Herry Perry: Artist and Illustrator, by Julian Francis. Publisher: Sansom and Company, 2024.
This new book brings together the artwork of Herry Perry (1897–1962), assessing for the first time the achievement of this witty and versatile artist. Her first love was wood engraving. But she quickly moved on to use other skills she acquired at the Central School of Arts and Crafts (now Central Saint Martins). She is best known for sixty-some witty and inventive posters she designed for Frank Pick at London Transport from 1927–38. Perry was also commissioned to paint murals, most famously two on R.M.S. Queen Mary in 1935–36. And she created a map mural for Rothamsted Research Station in 1932 (which can still be seen there). This biography provides a comprehensive overview of her oeuvre.
Read Daniel Milroy Maher’s review of the book in Creative Review.
Great Women Sculptors, by Phaidon Editors, with an introduction by Lisa Le Feuvre. Publisher: Phaidon, 2024.
Great Women Sculptors presents a more expansive and inclusive history of sculpture. It surveys the work of more than 300 trailblazing artists from over 60 countries. It spans 500 years from the Renaissance to the present day. Organized alphabetically, each artist is represented by an image and newly commissioned text. This wide-ranging survey champions the best-known women sculptors from art history alongside today’s rising stars. From more recognizable names such as Camille Claudel, Gego, Barbara Hepworth, and Yayoi Kusama to some of today’s most significant contemporary artists including Huma Bhaba, Mona Hatoum, and Simone Leigh, this book showcases 500 years of sculptural creativity in one accessible, visually stunning volume.
The Story Quilts of Yvonne Wells, by Stacy I. Morgan and Yvonne Thomas Wells. Publisher: University of Alabama Press, 2024.
The expansive body of work of self-taught quilter Yvonne Thomas Wells serves as testament to the sweeping tides of American life. It also testifies to Wells’ significance as a major figure within the folk art and art world writ large. The Story Quilts of Yvonne Wells is an introduction and definitive guide to her story and her art. Beginning when she was nearly 40 years old and without formal training, Wells created her first quilt for practical use. But she was soon hand stitching appliqué figures into bold, original designs that unleashed her voice as a storyteller. Incorporating a wide variety of symbolic materials and unconventional objects—“anything I can stick a needle in”—Wells’ vivid story quilts reveal a fearless and encyclopedic vision ranging from the intimately autobiographical to iconic scenes from African American history, the Bible, Southern culture, and contemporary headlines.
Helen Clapcott: In the Light of Buildings, by Andrew Lambirth. Publisher: Lund Humphries, 2024.
In her painting career, Helen Clapcott (b.1952) has remained consistent in both her choice of subject and her disregard of the art establishment’s playbook. In the first major monograph on the artist, Andrew Lambirth presents a painter with an uncompromising vision. Based on numerous conversations with the artist, Lambirth provides a lively account of the artist’s background, training and working methods. This is a study of an artist’s very personal relationship with the evolving landscape of her childhood and her lifelong artistic engagement with the city that she loves.
Zaha Hadid’s Paintings: Imagining Architecture, by Desley Luscombe. Publisher: Lund Humphries, 2024.
Zaha Hadid is widely regarded as a visionary and influential architect. By her untimely death in 2016 already enjoyed global acclaim. Drawing on interviews with Hadid’s contemporaries and her own words, this book is the first to focus on painting as an important aspect of Hadid’s work. It examines selected paintings in detail, critically assessing them in relation to the Suprematists, de Stijl, Cubism and Futurism. And it offers insights into Hadid’s paintings developed architectural and spatial ideas, later realized in her buildings.
New Women’s Work: Reimagining “Feminine” Craft in Contemporary Art, by Angelik Vizcarrondo-Laboy. Publisher: Smith Street Books, 2024.
“Women’s work” has historically been relegated to the domestic—absent from galleries and discussions of “art.” From cross-stitching and quilts to baskets and decorative ceramics, women have spent centuries creating masterful crafts without recognition from the historians and institutions that determine whose names are remembered and whose work is celebrated. This book explores these art forms, focusing on ten areas traditionally labelled as “feminine.” Featuring 38 artists from around the world, Angelik Vizcarrondo-Laboy examines the traditions these artists work with and the boundaries they’re breaking. Through stories of family, migration, gender, and what it means to be a craftsperson, New Women’s Work considers the future of the feminine in the arts.
Exhibition catalogs
Fruit of Friendship: Portraits by Mary Beale, Texts by Philip Mould, Lawrence Hendra, Ellie Smith, Valeria Vallucci,Tabitha Barber, and Helen Draper. Publisher: Paul Holberton Publishing, 2024.
Mary Beale (1633–1699) was Britain’s first woman artist to run a successful studio practice. In an era when portraitists were in high demand, Beale’s unique practice set her apart from her competitors. The title of this publication and of the accompanying exhibition is drawn from Beale’s own writings. The materials presented span her entire career. Featuring essays by leading scholars, the catalog introduces a number of recently discovered portraits by Beale. It also showcases several important works that have never been publicly displayed before.
Maria Cosway, 1760–1838: The Exceptional Journey of an Artist, Edited by Amandine Rabier. Publisher: Snoeck, 2024.
From her childhood in Tuscany, Maria Cosway’s destiny was clear: she was to be a painter. In Florence and Rome, the English artists who crossed her path predicted her great destiny as a history painter. She led a lavish life, entertaining the whole of London’s High Society in her musical salons. She wove a veritable network of influence around the world. Defying all predictions, Maria Cosway finally found her emancipation in a completely different calling: educating young girls. This catalog for the 2024 exhibition dedicated to Maria Cosway is richly illustrated. The authors are renowned art historians specializing in 18th century history, art and culture.
Helen McNicoll: An Impressionist Journey, Edited by Anne-Marie Bouchard. Publisher: Five Continents Publishing, 2024.
Focusing on the idea of mobility in the life of the Canadian artist Helen McNicoll, this book examines the themes of female independence, risk-taking, friendship, and freedom for women. At a time when well-to-do women were often confined to family and domestic life, McNicoll stood out for her love of travel. The artist emphasized painting outdoors and researching the effects of light and atmosphere that her numerous trips sustained. Helen McNicoll. An Impressionist Journey exhibition presents more than 60 works by the artist, 25 of them from the Pierre Lassonde collection. Text in English and French.
Modern Women: Flight of Time, Edited by Julia Waite. Publisher: Auckland Art Gallery / Toi o Tāmaki, 2024.
Modern Women: Flight of Time cements a previously understudied history of modern art in Aotearoa New Zealand: that of modern women artists. Profiling 44 innovative artists, this book places women in the front and center of New Zealand modernism. It explores their varied responses to the transformational changes occurring across five decades of the 20th century. The book is richly illustrated, containing over 120 images.
Etel Adnan: Between East and West, Edited by Sébastien Delot. Publisher: Hatje Cantz, 2024.
As a poet, painter and philosopher, Lebanese American artist Etel Adnan was a major figure in Arab modernism. It was not until the 1960s that she turned to painting, exploring what she called “the immediate beauty of color.” In recent years, museum shows dedicated to women artists and postwar abstraction have included her art. For the first major exhibition in Saudi Arabia of Adnan’s work, the catalog brings together works by the artist from all periods and in all mediums. Showcasing her diversity of output, it solidifies her legacy as one of the great creative figures in the 20th-century Arab world. Three curatorial essays and a comprehensive, multilingual chronology enrich the book.
Dorothy Iannone: Love is Forever, Isn’t It?, Edited by Clément Dirié, Joanna Zielinska. Text by Alison Gingeras, Dorothy Iannone, Ana Mendoza Aldana, Joanna Zielinska. Publisher: JRP Editions, 2024.
For more than six decades, Dorothy Iannone (1933–2022) represented ecstatic love, the union of gender, feeling and pleasure. Her oeuvre is recognized as one of the most provocative and fruitful bodies of work in recent decades in terms of the liberalization of female sexuality, and political and feminist issues. This publication sheds new light on the legendary artist’s practice by dealing with her idiosyncratic takes on performativity and transdisciplinarity. The contributors offer new approaches to celebrate her work and life.
Paula Rego: Power Games, Edited by Eva Reifert. Publisher: Hirmer Publishers, 2024.
Paula Rego’s female protagonists come either from real life or derive from the world’s great legends, fairy tales, and myths. Heroines of our time, they have endured illegal abortions or fought against the limitations of traditional gender roles instead of dragons. “My favorite themes are power games and hierarchies.” Rego’s oeuvre is a tour de force of creativity. Endlessly versatile and inexhaustible, it has deeply roots in pictorial worlds and stories from both past and present. This volume approaches the remarkable wealth of Rego’s multi-faceted universe through a range of perspectives. It tells of the power of history and emotions, women’s rights, and invisible structures of domination.
Romi Behrens: A Painting Life, Edited by Rachel Rose Smith. Publisher: Sansom and Company, 2024.
The career of painter Romi Behrens was as long as it was broad. It spanned many genres, including still life, portraiture and landscape painting. This is the first monograph to pay homage to the extent of her career. It provides a selected but characteristically-diverse range of visual and written material from the artist’s oeuvre and archives. Rachel Rose Smith gives chronological shape to the span of Romi’s work. Smith analyzes the varying relationships throughout between the person and her work. The book reveals an oeuvre that is both tender and vibrant, as well as persistent and constantly on the move.
Judy Chicago: Revelations, Text by Judy Chicago, Martha Easton, Hans Ulrich Obrist, Bettina Korek, Chris Bayley, Donald Woodman. Publisher: Thames and Hudson, 2024.
Revelations is the work that Judy Chicago believed would never see publication: a radical retelling of human history in the form of an illuminated manuscript, recovering stories of women that society sought to erase. Begun alongside her iconic installation The Dinner Party in the mid-1970s, and drawing on her intensive research into goddess worship and women’s history, Revelations is foundational to Chicago’s decades-long practice. It is at once a vibrant narrative and a work of art, fifty years in the making.
Lesley Dumbrell: Thrum, Edited by Anne Ryan, with essays by Anne Ryan, Terence Maloon, Juliette Peers, and Consuelo Cavaniglia; interview with Lesley Dumbrell, chronology by Scott Elliot. Publisher: University of Washington Press, 2024.
Australian artist Lesley Dumbrell is known for her sophisticated and lyrical abstract paintings and works on paper. Highly ordered and exactly rendered, her compelling work transports the viewer into worlds of vibrant rhythm, colour and sensation. Dumbrell’s remarkable facility with color and grasp of the organizing power of the grid remain at the heart of her distinctive and exploratory abstraction, sustained over five decades of practice. Richly illustrated with over 120 works, this book showcases the evolution of Dumbrell’s artistic language. It traces the various phases and themes that have defined her creative trajectory.
Magdalene Odundo: A Dialogue with Objects, by Sequoia Miller, with a foreword by Susan Jefferies and contributions from Barbara Thompson, Nehal El-Hadi, and Elizabeth Harney. Publisher: Princeton University Press in association with the Gardiner Museum of Ceramic Art, 2024.
The extraordinary works of Kenyan-born British ceramicist Magdalene Odundo (b. 1950) have been widely celebrated for their beauty and universality. This beautifully illustrated book discusses Odundo’s innovative method and puts her ceramic forms into conversation with global contemporary art. Sequoia Miller sheds light on the colonial and material traditions that inform Odundo’s ceramics. Miller how the artist deftly blends cultural and ethnographic sources to give expression to the postcolonial experience. This close examination allows for a careful look at the artist’s works on paper—her prints and sketchbook drawings, published here in depth for the first time—demonstrating how they are a fundamental aspect of her creative practice. The book also features an in-depth Q&A with Odundo.
Hayv Kahramn: The Foreign in Us, Edited by Frauke V. Josenhans, with texts by Hayv Kahraman and Miriam Ticktin. Publisher: Gregory R. Miller and Co. / Moody Center for the Arts at Rice University, 2024.
The work of Iraqi Kurdish, Los Angeles–based artist Hayv Kahraman (b. 1981) explores topics of memory and dynamics of nonfixity that are part of the diasporic experience. Encompassing painting, drawing, performance and sculpture, Kahraman poignantly foregrounds the body as object and subject to address gendered racism, migrant consciousness and marginal spaces. The Foreign in Us includes new and recent paintings and drawings by Kahraman. The text is informed by the artist’s cultural heritage and her experience as a refugee, while probing her research-driven practice. This catalog features original writing by Kahraman describing the evolution of her art over the past five years. Miriam Ticktin contributes an essay that further contextualizes Kahraman’s work.
New edition
Frankenthaler, by John Elderfield. Publisher: Gagosian, in collaboration with Helen Frankenthaler Foundation, New York, 2024.
Revised and expanded, John Elderfield’s definitive monograph on Helen Frankenthaler now covers the artist’s career in its entirety. Originally published in 1989 by Harry N. Abrams, Frankenthaler drew on Elderfield’s extensive conversations with the artist and quickly became the authoritative account of her oeuvre. Developing this updated edition gave Elderfield the opportunity to reimagine the book entirely and substantially rewrite it. The new version explores insights gained through curating numerous exhibitions over the last decade. New content includes a chapter on a previously overlooked group of paintings of the late 1950s through the early 1960s. A final chapter discusses Frankenthaler’s late works, making this volume the most comprehensive on the artist to date.
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New Books about Women Artists | Apr–June 2024
New Books about Women Artists | Jan–Mar 2024
Recent Books for Young Readers About Women Artists
New Books about Women Artists | Oct–Dec 2023
New Books about Women Artists | Jul–Sept 2023
Ten Intriguing Books About Remarkable Women Artists, a guest post by Carol M. Cram
