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Are you able to name three painters beyond Frida Kahlo? (Part I)

We review the life and work of three of the best artists in history, whose name has been silenced... and that's why you don't know him.

Let's start by assuming that we have an absolute deficit as far as culture is concerned. That deficit is basically the authors. Hey, it's great that you know the life and work of Francisco de Goya and Diego Velázquez because Goya and Velázquez were very good. Who is going to deny that, my God of my soul? And Murillo, and Van Gogh, and Klimt, and Monet, and Michelangelo, and, ultimately, almost every name that has gone down in history because it has gone down in history for a reason. But are you able to name three painters right now? So, suddenly, that they come to your head and without putting “PAINTERS” in Google, sprawled on the sofa. And I'm not even telling you from here, but from all over the world. And of all times.

It annoys you to realize that you don't. Or, at least, that they don't come out so fast. And there are only three. Perhaps, of course, Frida Kahlo will appear in your mind, whose face has also become a symbol (and plated, although in her life she had to deal with machismo, which she considered her husband, Diego Rivera, better). But yeah. And that, accept it, is fatal. And you know. That you have made a face to say 'geez, I should be able to answer this question'. No problem, because here we bring you the first part of a series of articles in which you will find not only names to learn, but enduring artists of different styles and historical stages that, if you delve into their work, will make you discover yourself better, will they will better anchor the world and they will chisel you with more rigor to life. Look how beautiful.

Sofonisba Anguissola

In 2018, of the total of 1,160 paintings exhibited in the Prado Museum, only six were of women. Of those six, half were by Anguissola, a highly recognized painter at the time that history was in charge of hiding by attributing her paintings to various copyists (men). Born in Cremona around 1535 and died in Palermo 90 years later, she was an expert in portraiture, even though she was not allowed to study anatomy because she was a woman.

Self-portrait Sofonisba_Anguissola - Lancut Museum, Poland

Her youth lived in Italy, where she met her apocryphal teacher, because he could not officially teach her: Michelangelo, who took her under his wing. She moved to the court of Felipe II and there she practiced her art as a lady-in-waiting to Queen Elizabeth of Valois. She never stopped painting, but in 1571, the king, concerned that she was single, found her a husband in Italy. She would later become a widow and remarry a rich merchant, who admired her. When the Flemish painter Anton van Dyck visited her in his old age, he was surprised to see this almost 90-year-old woman talking about painting with an almost jovial passion.

Portrait of Queen Anne of Austria - Museo del Prado

lee krasner

Often relegated to the role of “Jackson Pollock's wife”, the only truth is that Krasner's work has substance on its own. A New Yorker from 1908, the daughter of Ukrainian immigrants, her real name was Lena, but she changed it to the more ambiguous Lee when she saw how the art world worked. His teacher, the artist Hans Hofmann, sees a work of his in 1937 and exclaims: "It is such a good work that no one would know that it was made by a woman." Her family doesn't believe in her.

At the beginning of the 40s, in Mexico, he meets Pollock. They get married in 1945. From that year on her work stagnates: she doesn't have time because she dedicates herself to caring for her alcoholic husband, promoting her works and managing her art. In addition, she sacrifices even more and, as the respected painter has started with a technique that requires a lot of space to paint on the floor in large dimensions, she barely fits in the studio and has to settle for making Little Images . “It's a shame that women's liberation didn't happen 30 years earlier in my life. I couldn't run out and do my job as a woman artist in a world as sexist as the art world, I couldn't continue my painting and stay in the role I was in as Mrs. Pollock”, she would assure years after the death of the author in a car accident in 1956.

Image via Tristan Fewings/Getty Images

Since then, and although he suffers from insomnia and follows the author's abstract expressionism, his work gains strength, flight and signature. He specializes in geometric and flat shapes. Actress Marcia Gay Harden won the Best Supporting Actress Oscar for her portrayal of her in the 2000 Pollock tape. She had died at age 75 in 1984.

Berthe Morisot

Berthe Morisot (Photo: Wikimedia Commons Public Domain)

When we talk about Berthe Morisot (Bourges, France, 1841) we are talking about one of the indisputable figures of French Impressionism. Perhaps, we are not going to be rude, her last name has been silenced too much so that history does not confuse her with her other sister, also a painter, Edma Morisot. But in the case of Berthe, we are talking about one of the founders of the pictorial movement, an avant-garde of impressionism who exhibited at the Paris Salon at the age of 23 (and did so without interruption for a decade, from 1864 to 1874). He surpassed all the teachers he had until he reached one of those who would influence him the most, Camille Corot (he also often referred to the Barbizon School, led by Jean-François Millet, famous for his outdoor paintings with gleaners and wheat harvesters).

Morisot used the technique, widely used among the Impressionists, of taking notes –sketches and sketches- to later paint them in the studio. Domestic, natural and everyday images prevail in her, which, unlike her male companions, relegates her work, according to critics, to the background. His sister Edma married in 1869 and gave up painting. She, who had begun to make friends with the jet set of her time, like the poets Mallarmé or Baudelaire or the painters Degas and Manet, marries a brother of the latter, Eugène, who will encourage her to continue painting since he, amateur painter, he understands that he does not have the level of his wife.

Berthe Morisot - The Cradle -Orsay Museum

Morisot used the technique, widely used among the Impressionists, of taking notes –sketches and sketches- to later paint them in the studio. Domestic, natural and everyday images prevail in her, which, unlike her male companions, relegates her work, according to critics, to the background. His sister Edma married in 1869 and gave up painting. She, who had begun to make friends with the jet set of her time, like the poets Mallarmé or Baudelaire or the painters Degas and Manet, marries a brother of the latter, Eugène, who will encourage her to continue painting since he, amateur painter, he understands that he does not have the level of his wife.

Berthe Morisot (1841-1895), Été (Summer: Young Woman at a Window), 1879, oil on canvas, Montpellier, Musée Fabre, donated by Mr. and Mrs. Ernest Rouart (Julie Manet). Image via © PHOTO STUDIO THIERRY JACOB

She, who only stopped painting the year her daughter Julie was born, nevertheless died very young, in 1895 (at age 54, three years after her husband). She had managed to exhibit in London and New York and, although the following years her colleagues (Renoir, Monet, etc...) managed to celebrate a show solely of her that was a success with 340 of her works, her name, once again, was forgotten.

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