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 fourth quarter of 2025. 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
Absolutely Amazing American Artists: Sarah Miriam Peale, by Maria Ausherman, illustrated by Jeanne Conway. Publisher: TBM Books, 2025.
Meet Sarah Miriam Peale, one of America’s first woman artists. As a Peale, she belonged to a family of artists who greatly contributed to America’s early art by painting hundreds of America’s leading citizens. Like members of the Peale family before her, she too painted portraits of the young nation’s leaders; she was the first American woman to do so. She was also a talented painter of fruit still lifes. This book presents the story of her childhood, her artistic training, and her career as one of America’s first professional women artists. It includes a vocabulary list and a set of questions that can be used in the classroom.
Anna Atkins: Photographer, Naturalist, Innovator, by Corey Keller. Publisher: Getty Publications, 2025.
Step into the world of Anna Atkins (1799–1871), perhaps the world’s first female photographer and a pioneer of the medium. She spent her life surrounded by some of the brightest minds of Victorian England during the Industrial Revolution. Despite societal gender norms of the time, which typically limited women to a life within the home, Atkins gained the respect of the scientific community with her ambitious multivolume album Photographs of British Algae: Cyanotype Impressions, now recognized as the world’s first photographically illustrated book. Her cyanotypes, in addition to their scientific accuracy, lent artistic beauty to her publications, setting the stage for new uses of this experimental technology.
Adult non-fiction
May Morris Designs: The Essence and Soul of Beautiful Embroidery, by Lynn Hulse. Publisher: Ashmolean Museum, 2025.
May Morris (1862–1938) is recognized today as a pioneer of the Arts and Crafts movement, a leading exponent of decorative needlework and a campaigner for women artists. Despite being one of the foremost practitioners of her generation, it was design that May described as “the very soul and essence of beautiful embroidery.” One of the largest collections of May’s designs, from roughly sketched ideas to finished patterns, is held by the Ashmolean Museum. This book showcases a selection of 25 of these designs, which are published here for the first time, positioning May’s output within the artistic developments of the late 19th and early 20th centuries.
Women Artists in their Own Words, Compiled by Eleanor Walker; Introduction by Jennifer Samet. Publisher: Merrell in association with Female Artists of the Mougins Museum (FAMM), 2025.
Women Artists in Their Own Words is a rich and inspiring collection of quotations from female artists from Impressionism, Surrealism and Abstract Expressionism to the present day. Here, the thoughts of 95 painters, sculptors and photographers offer glimpses into the hearts and minds behind provocative, dynamic and captivating art from the last 150 years. Alongside the words of each artist is one of her iconic works in the remarkable collection of Christian Levett, founder of FAMM, the museum devoted solely to women. From the quiet strength of Mary Cassatt and the revolutionary spirit of Frida Kahlo to the fierce independence of Lee Krasner; from the fearless honesty of Alice Neel and the unflinching lens of Nan Goldin to the raw intensity of Marina Abramović, this book captures the essence of what it means to create.
Chronicles of Ori: An African Epic, by Harmonia Rosales. Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company, 2025.
Vividly brought to life by Harmonia Rosales’s artwork, this book recounts stories of the powerful, temperamental deities called the Orishas; of the founding of Yorubaland by the shrewd leader Oduduwa; of the young heroine Eve, born in a time of violence and despair, who would help her people regain their past splendor; and of shimmering serpents and monstrous shadows who stalk the lands of mortals. At the center of these linked tales is the bond, sometimes fraying, between the Orishas and the humans who worship them. It was the Orishas who made humans, and who gave them their most precious resource: their Oris, or destinies.
Nominated for the NAACP Image Award for Outstanding Literary Work—Fiction. One of Hyperallergic’s Favorite Art Books of 2025.
Shahzia Sikander, by Jason Rosenfeld. Publisher: Lund Humphries, 2025.
This book covers the entirety of the multivalent art of Pakistan-born American artist Shahzia Sikander (b.1969), with a particular focus on her painting. It contextualizes her art within her early education in Lahore, move to America in 1993, and then her establishment in the New York art world since 1997. Sikander’s paintings, video animations, mosaics and sculptures interweave historical and contemporary ideas about narrative, gender, trade, empire, and diaspora while centering on women’s lives. This book considers the scope of Sikander’s considerable ambition and achievement.
Coreen Simpson: A Monograph, Edited by Sarah Lewis, Leigh Raiford, and Deborah Willis; Photographs by Coreen Simpson. Publisher: Aperture, 2025.
Working for publications such as Essence, Unique New York, and The Village Voice, from the late 1970s onward, —photographer, writer, and jeweler Coreen Simpson covered New York’s art and fashion scenes, producing portraits of a wide range of Black artists, literary figures, and celebrities. Her iconic jewelry, the Black Cameo, has been worn by everyone from the model Iman to civil-rights leader Rosa Parks. This long-awaited volume, Simpson’s first, features her celebrated B-Boys series—portraits of young people coming of age during the early years of hip-hop—as well as her experiments with collage and other formal interventions. An assortment of essays and an extended interview offer powerful reflections on Simpson’s unique blend of portraiture, sartorial politics, and her riveting story of an intrepid life in journalism, art, and fashion.
Jordan Casteel, by Legacy Russell, Asma Naeem, Katherine Brinson. Publisher: Phaidon, 2025.
Jordan Casteel (b.1989 in Denver) is a New York-based artist known for her large-scale, figurative portraits and landscapes made with gestural brushwork and bold swaths of color. From the New York City subway and the streets of Harlem to the woodlands of Upstate New York, Casteel has established a collaborative practice where individuals she has encountered over the course of her daily life are represented in their element, generating an experience that is at once intimate and collective. This, Casteel’s debut monograph, features nearly 150 beautifully reproduced images, with sections specially conceived and designed by the artist herself.
Knife-Woman: The Life of Louise Bougeois, by Marie-Laure Bernadac, translated by Lauren Elkin. Publisher: Yale University Press, 2025.
This biography of Louise Bourgeois traces the career of a great artist, her training, and her influences, as it tells the story of an exceptional woman’s life. Featuring personal photographs as well as reproductions of her work, this landmark publication is the first major biography to draw on the artist’s unpublished personal archives, including diaries, correspondence, and psychoanalytic writings, as well as the many interviews she gave and the reminiscences of those who knew her. The book elucidates Bourgeois’s friendships and rivalries with other major figures, including sculptor Louise Nevelson and Museum of Modern Art director Alfred H. Barr Jr. Erudite and keenly insightful, the biography also draws on Bourgeois’s well-known fascination with psychoanalysis to explore the deeply autobiographical nature of her artwork.
Exhibition catalogs
Unforgettable: Women Artists from Antwerp to Amsterdam, 1600–1750, Edited by Virginia Treanor and Frederica Dam. Publisher: Hannibal Publishers, 2025.
This exhibition catalog spotlights the overlooked contributions of female artists in the 17th-century Low Countries. While renowned male artists like Rembrandt and Vermeer have long dominated art history, female artists such as Clara Peeters and Michaelina Wautier have received limited recognition. This book challenges the notion that women were exceptions in the art world, showcasing works by over 40 artists across diverse media, including painting, sculpture, embroidery, and glass etching. It also highlights the socio-economic contexts that shaped their careers. The contributing authors explore themes of identity, ambition, social expectations, and artistic networks. By reevaluating the hierarchy between “fine” and “applied” arts, this book underscores the significant role women played in the artistic economy.
A Feast of Fruit and Flowers: Women Still Life Painters of the Seventeenth Century and Beyond, Edited by Bryn C. Schockmel. Publisher: The Hyde Collection, 2025.
For centuries, women artists have played a vital role in shaping the history of art, yet their contributions have often been overlooked, forgotten, or discarded. A Feast of Fruit and Flowers shines a spotlight on some of the historic women who were instrumental in the emergence and evolution of still life as a genre. Among the 17th-century artists the book discusses are Fede Galizia, Margaretha de Heer, Louise Moillon, Josefa de Óbidos, Maria van Oosterwyck (or Maria van Oosterwijck), Clara Peeters, Isabella Peeters, Rachel Ruysch, Maria Sibylla Merian, and Johanna Herolt. In the “and beyond” category are Elizabeth Blachrie Blackwell, Mary Moser, Victoria Dubourg, and Gabriele Münter. The book is beautifully produced and lavishly illustrated.
Emma Stebbins: Carving Out History, Edited by Karli Wurzelbacher. Publisher: Penn State University Press, 2025.
With the order for the Bethesda Fountain in Central Park, Emma Stebbins became the first woman to earn a public sculpture commission from the city of New York. She modeled inventive and incisive interpretations of literary and biblical subjects, unprecedented allegories of American industry, and notable portraits of her friends and family. When Bostonians installed her statue of educator Horace Mann on the grounds of the Massachusetts State House in 1865, Stebbins became the first woman in the country to complete an outdoor bronze monument. Yet today, the full scope of Stebbins’s history-making life and work is virtually unknown. Emma Stebbins: Carving Out History recognizes her as one of the most significant American sculptors of the 19th century.
Manet and Morisot, Edited by Emily A. Beeny. Publisher: Yale University Press in association with Fine Art Museums of San Francisco, 2025.
Berthe Morisot (1841–1895) was the sole female founding member of the Impressionist group, and Édouard Manet (1832–1883) was a pioneer of modern painting. To each other, they were colleagues, friends, and—following Morisot’s marriage to Manet’s brother—family. Through collaboration, competition, and mutual collecting, each influenced the other’s work and, in the process, changed the course of modern art. Exploring pairs and groups of related works, Manet and Morisot reveals that early in her career Morisot looked to Manet for inspiration, but as Morisot’s work became more daring and garnered widespread acclaim, Manet began to follow her example.
Grandma Moses: A Good Day’s Work, Edited by Leslie Umberger and Randall R. Griffey. Publisher: Princeton University Press in association with the Smithsonian American Art Museum, 2025.
The beloved recollections of rural life that Anna Mary Robertson “Grandma” Moses (1860–1961) painted earned her a distinctive place in the cultural imagination of the postwar era. This book repositions her as a multidimensional force in American art. Drawing on Moses’s reflection on her own life as “a good day’s work,” the book charts Moses’s creative development from her earliest artistic efforts to the emergence of her signature style. Beautifully illustrated, Grandma Moses: A Good Day’s Work captures the indomitable spirit Moses brought to her artmaking, conveying a candor and authority that still resonate today with the quest for a homespun American visual tradition.
The book is a Publishers Weekly Top Ten Art, Architecture & Photography Book.
Gabriele Münter: Contours of a World, Edited by Megan Fontanella; foreword by Mariët Westermann. Publisher: Guggenheim Museum, 2025.
The central focus of this exhibition catalog, and the show it accompanies, is the painting practice between 1908 and 1920 of Gabriele Münter (1877–1962). The study also illuminates Münter’s lesser-known later work and includes significant examples of her photography taken during earlier extensive travels in the United States. Highlighting more than 90 paintings, drawings, and photographs, this publication traces Münter’s pioneering and understudied practice. It also challenges accepted historical narratives that have tended to sideline women artists. Reproductions of archival material appear alongside choice selections of the artist’s sketches, prints, and reverse glass paintings.
Kate Steinitz: From Hannover to Los Angeles, Edited by Pauline Behrmann and Isabel Schulz. Publisher: Hirmer Verlag, 2025.
This monograph covers the multifaceted activities of Käte Steinitz (1889–1975) as an artist and writer in avant-garde circles during the Weimar Republic. It also explores her experience as an emigrant, art historian, and promoter of modernism in the United States. Influenced by Expressionism, New Objectivity, and New Vision, Steinitz’s work demonstrates a talent for observation and an ability to quickly capture movement and fleeting impressions. This overview of her photography, historical context, and personal development shaped by exile brings exciting new interest to a remarkable artist.
Charlie Toorop: Love for Van Gogh, Texts by Renske Cohen Tervaert, Wessel Krul, Franka Blok and Marjet Brolsma. Publisher: Waanders Publishers, 2025.
The work of Charley Toorop (1891–1955) has its own originality and power. But she did also have an eye to the work of other artists. There is one artist who she believed stood at the cradle of her artistry and for whom she subsequently had respect throughout her life: Vincent van Gogh. His work was for her “the breakthrough to a new world.” Four essays explain her fascination and place it in a broader context. They include her travels to the Borinage and southern France where she saw the landscape and people through Van Gogh’s eyes, her awe of Van Gogh’s “deep barren love of reality” in the social and political engagement of the interwar period, and her interest in man’s state of mind.
Louise Nevelson: The Poetry of Searching, Edited by Valerie Ucke. Publisher: Hirmer Verlag, 2025.
Searched for on the street and then implemented in her work: Louise Nevelson (1899–1988) groups different materials into novel visual worlds. With surprising uses of color and original forms, Nevelson brings together materials to create surprising objects— minimalist yet overflowing, sensitive, reserved, and experimental. She invites viewers to continually search for, find, and recognize new elements in her collages. Through dense imagery, it becomes clear why she enjoyed such great success in the United States during her lifetime.
Lee Miller, Edited by Hilary Floe and Saskia Flower. Publisher: Yale University Press in association with Tate, 2025.
Fearless, poetic, and surreal, the work of American-born photographer Lee Miller (1907–1977) leads us on a helter-skelter journey through the 20th century. An active participant in the avant-garde networks of her day, Miller worked across the United States, Europe, and North Africa over five decades, in a time when photography was not widely accepted as an art form. Her genre-bending photographs explored portraiture, fashion, still life, landscape, and reportage, all united by her unique artistic sensibility. Drawing on new archival research, Lee Miller features essays exploring every aspect of Miller’s career, from her early years in Paris, New York, and Cairo to her wartime journalism and late portraits.
Lois Dodd – Framing the Ephemeral, Edited by Hans Ulrich Obrist, Louise Bjeldbak Henriksen, Karen Wilkin. Publisher: Hannibal Books, 2025.
At the age of 98, painter Lois Dodd is still considered a pioneering yet often overlooked figure in postwar American art. For 70 years, Dodd has been quietly yet consistently defying entrenched gender norms, while remaining steadfast in her clear, attentive way of seeing. Framing the Ephemeral offers a compelling exploration of her observation-based paintings, with a particular focus on light, atmosphere, and everyday scenes. The book highlights her significant contributions and reaffirms Dodd’s enduring place in art history.
Edita Schubert: Profusion, Edited by David Crowley. Publisher: Hatje Cantz, 2025.
Edita Schubert (1947–2001) was an exceptionally prolific and inventive artist, active from the early 1970s until her untimely death at the age of 54 in 2001. A significant figure in Croatian and Yugoslav art, she exhibited at the Venice Biennale and the Biennale of Sydney and in galleries in Austria and the US, as well as frequently throughout Yugoslavia. Yet today, her art remains relatively little known. This book is the first major study of Edita Schubert’s art published outside Croatia.
Sibylle Springer: Ferne Spiegel / Distant Mirrors, Texts by Jessica Fritz, Christoph Grunenberg, Annekathrin Kohout, Martina von Meltzing, Jantje Schlaberg, Julia Voss. Publisher: DCV / Dr. Cantz’sche Verlagsgesellschaft, 2025.
The paintings of Sibylle Springer (b. 1975) focus on the role of women in the art world of the digital age. For her portrait series Feed, she has painted 40 female artists to date, based on staged photographs from their Instagram feeds. “Is social media an instrument of emancipation, or does it even lead to new forms of objectification?” (Kohout) In Wait for It, Springer copied pop stars from the internet, but used a silver paint that oxidizes the canvases, thus aging the eternally youthful icons before our eyes—precisely what digital image control seeks to prevent. In her more recent textile objects, Springer interweaves female artists of the past and present.
Jill Mulleady: Fight-or-Flight, Edited by Alison Coplan and Laura McLean-Ferris. Publisher: Lenz Press, 2025.
In the paintings and woodcuts of artist Jill Mulleady (b. 1980), characters enact the physiological stress reactions of “fight or flight”: either adopting extreme or violent survival methods, or retreating into isolation. Mulleady’s work roots out fantasies, motivations and fears in order to depict a landscape of polarization and crisis. In her feverish work, she reanimates ancient mythologies and recent histories with an enduring, twisted force. And yet, opposed and extreme, the figures and scenes featured also point to futures in which beings are pushed into marginal spaces, suggesting an ominous threat at civilization’s center. Fight-or-Flight is the first major monograph on Jill Mulleady, surveying her artistic output over the last 10 years.
Similar Art Herstory posts:
New Books About Women Artists | July–Sept 2025
New Books About Women Artists | Apr–June 2025
Recent Books for Young Readers About Women Artists
New Books About Women Artists | Jan–Mar 2025
New Books About Women Artists | Oct–Dec 2024
New Books about Women Artists | July–Sept 2024
Ten Intriguing Books About Remarkable Women Artists, a guest post by Carol M. Cram
