compilatory summary of the most important schools and woman painters of the modernist period

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Rosete Montiel María de los Ángeles Valle Gracia Andrea Montserrat Compilation of the Most Important Schools and Woman Painters of the Modernist Period The Modernist period in Mexico Main Schools: Surrealism This term is used to refer to the artistic movement that started to grow in Mexico some years after Andre Breton published the Surrealist Manifesto (1924), with Frida Kahlo, Leonora Carrington, María Izquierdo and Remedios Varo as the most representative women artists of this period. What helped this movement grow in Mexico was the great number of exiled surrealist artists that came from Europe and influenced the young artists. The first gallery presenting only surrealist paintings in Mexico was commissioned by Breton himself, and was held on January 17th, 1940. The movement generally follows the same conventions of European surrealism, but elements from the Mexican culture can be perceived in it, such as the use of bright colors. Mexican Muralism This movement was born in 1913 and was the major art movement in Mexico during the 20th Century; it was the 1

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Page 1: Compilatory Summary of the Most Important Schools and Woman Painters of the Modernist Period

Rosete Montiel María de los ÁngelesValle Gracia Andrea Montserrat

Compilation of the Most Important Schools and Woman Painters of the

Modernist Period

The Modernist period in Mexico

Main Schools:

Surrealism

This term is used to refer to the artistic movement that started to grow in Mexico some

years after Andre Breton published the Surrealist Manifesto (1924), with Frida Kahlo,

Leonora Carrington, María Izquierdo and Remedios Varo as the most representative

women artists of this period. What helped this movement grow in Mexico was the great

number of exiled surrealist artists that came from Europe and influenced the young

artists. The first gallery presenting only surrealist paintings in Mexico was

commissioned by Breton himself, and was held on January 17th, 1940. The movement

generally follows the same conventions of European surrealism, but elements from the

Mexican culture can be perceived in it, such as the use of bright colors.

Mexican Muralism

This movement was born in 1913 and was the major art movement in Mexico during

the 20th Century; it was the result of a chaotic time in the country, a few years after the

revolutionary war started. The artists intended to create a national identity and educate

the people through the walls of the most important buildings in the city. The first

modern mural was painted by Gerardo Murillo, who thought that “Mexican art should

reflect Mexican life”. This idea permeated most of the works that were later painted by

the three most important figures of the movement: José Clemente Orozco, Diego

Rivera, and David Alfaro Siqueiros. Lesser known women muralists also had a great

participation in the movement. Elena Huerta and Aurora Reyes Flores are the most

important of the time. There are also the Greenwood sisters, who are considered by

James Oles, in his book, Las Hermanas Greenwood en México, the first women

muralists in Mexico.

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Bibliography:

Anonymous. “The Mexican Muralist Movement”. San Bernardino County Museum. 2009.

«http://www.sbcounty.gov/museum/media/press-kit/contretas/contreras-media-kit

mural-tradition.pdf»

Anonymous. “Surrealism - Art History 101 Basics”. Early 1920s to the Present.

«http://arthistory.about.com/od/modernarthistory/a/Surrealism-Art-History-101

Basics.htm»

Anonymous. “Surrealism: Origins, Influences, History, Characteristics of Surrealist Art

Movement, Founded by Andre Breton”. «http://www.visual-arts-cork.com/history

of-art/surrealism.htm#techniques»

Mainero del Castillo, Luz Elena. “El muralismo y la Revolución Mexicana”. Instituto

Nacional de Estudios Históricos de las Revoluciones de México. 2013

«http://www.inehrm.gob.mx/Portal/PtMain.php?pagina=exp-muralismo-en-la

revolucion-articulo»

Mohun, Janet Ed. Arte: La guía visual definitiva 1900-1945. España: Dorling Kindersley,

2010

The Modernist period in England

Main Schools:

The Camden Town Group in London

The Camden Town group was not a long-term group. As a matter of fact, the group held

just three exhibitions, all at the Carfax Gallery in fashionable St James’s, London, in

1911 and 1912., but its name has become synonymous with a distinctive period in the

history of British art before the First World War. Its name comes from an area of north

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London where a number of the artists lived and worked, the group aimed to reflect the

realities of modern urban life. It started out in weekly gatherings held by Walter

Sickert’s Fitzroy Street Group since 1907 and which in 1913 developed into the larger

and intentionally more diverse London Group, still active today. The Camden Town

Group was composed of sixteen artists, judged by an inner core to be ‘the best and the

most promising of the day’. Controversially, women were not allowed to join, though

they formed part of the group’s circle.

Its members valued originality of expression and accepted different approaches,

although they related more to a shared ethos and ambition which was to respond to the

social and cultural life of modern Britain, just as impressionist painters had painted

scenes of ‘modern life’ in France a generation before. Their notably excluded women

artists; Stanislawa de Karlowska, Sylvia Gosse, Nan Hudson and Ethel Sands, had

complex motivations, which emerged from the time in which they lived. It was a time

of suffrage agitation and the development of the modern woman. Through their

paintings they redefined the concept of the domestic interior. Originally, the British

home was inextricably linked to social and moral values, gender roles, economy and the

function of taste. The Camden Town painters presented color schemes, furniture types,

textures and ornaments to form specific ‘room-types’ whose meanings were read

against the character of their inhabitants. Thus, to demonstrate that the domestic interior

was a space where they could exercise their own creativity and enter into conversation

and exchange ideas.

The Bloomsbury Group in London

The Bloomsbury Group was an informal association of artists and intellectuals in

England during the first half of the twentieth century. Its members were artists, writers

and intellectuals who began to meet at 46 Gordon Square in the home where the artist

Vanessa Bell and her writer sister Virginia Woolf lived, in 1905 for drinks and

conversation. Their meetings continued for the next three decades, but with the deaths

of key members in the 1930s and 1940s, the group lost its cohesion, although individual

members remained friends and continued their creative careers. The name

“Bloomsbury” was first attached to the group in 1912 when Vanessa Bell, Duncan

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Grant and other young artist associates, exhibited work for the first time. This name

referred to the area in which they lived and worked; Bloomsbury is a district of garden

squares surrounded by elegant town houses in central London.

The Bloomsbury Group, or some image of it, was recognized by the public for the

first time when they held the Post-Impressionistic exhibitions in 1910 and 1912 in

London and from then on, during the next three decades, many contributions to

literature and the arts were associated to the group. Although the art of Bloomsbury

may today look rather traditional in the context of the development of twentieth-century

art, their influence and contribution to British art was considerable. Most plastic and

literary production was eclectic in style, picking up and dropping different influences.

Bell and Grant founded and co-directed the Omega Workshops where they produced

textiles that were innovative, and still look very modern today. Their purpose was to

provide a new source of regular income to artists and to bring aesthetically pleasing

objects into the English home.

The other important woman painter in the group, apart from Vanessa Bell, was Dora

Carrington. The literature about their art remains remarkably limited, especially since

most of what does exist has focused on their personal histories and relationships with

better-known members of Bloomsbury, despite their own prolific artistic careers. Their

marginalization as artists can be attributed to various factors associated with their

gender.

The Vorticism Group

The Vorticists are the British avant-garde group which was formed in London in 1914

by the artist, writer and polemicist Wyndham Lewis and members of the Rebel Art

Center. Its production included painting, drawing, printmaking, sculpture and

photographs. Their main objective was to produce a new living abstraction that

expressed their sense of the dynamism of the modern world. Their most famous

collaborators were the sculptors Henri Gaudier-Brzeska and Jacob Epstein, the

photographer Alvin Langdon Coburn, the writers Ezra Pound and T. E. Hulme and the

poet T. S. Eliot.

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The Vorticists forged their own distinctive style combining machine-age forms and

the energetic imagery suggested by a vortex. Ezra Pound declared in Blast that “the

vortex is the point of maximum energy. It represents, in mechanics, the greatest

efficiency. We use the words ‘greatest efficiency’ in the precise sense—as they would

be used in a text book of Mechanics”, whereas Wyndham Lewis described it as a

whirlpool, at whose heart is a vortex of great silent place where all the energy is

concentrated and there, at the point of concentration, is stillness. It is this stillness

which differentiates Vorticism from Italian Futurism.

The short-lived Vorticist movement was often seen as a predominantly masculine,

affair, but the work of the women members, Jessica Dismorr and Helen Saunders was

equally compelling and innovative. Dismorr and Saunders were as thoroughly trained,

and could lay claim to as much professional recognition, as the other founding members

of the Vorticist group. Dismorr had studied at the Slade Academy of Arts and at the

Atelier la Palette in Paris under Jean Metzinger and JD Fergusson, and exhibited in

Paris and in London. Saunders had studied for three years with Rosa Waugh (Slade-

trained and a former pupil of Gwen John), before briefly attending the Slade and later

the Central School of Arts and Crafts. She exhibited in London and Paris from 1912,

and was favorably noticed in reviews by Roger Fry and Clive Bell. When the first issue

of Blast was released in July 1914 both of them signed the manifesto and were actively

participating in the creative process, but were always seen as marginal figures, even by

the other members of the group due to their gender.

Bibliography:

Antiff, Mark. “The Vorticist I: Drawing the Vortex”. Tate Etc. Issue 22, 1 May 2011.

«http://www.tate.org.uk/context-comment/articles/drawing-vortex»

“Archive Journals: Bloomsbury”. TATE Gallery of London.

«http://www2.tate.org.uk/archivejourneys/bloomsburyhtml/»

“Archive Journals: Bloomsbury members”. TATE Gallery of London.

«http://www2.tate.org.uk/archivejourneys/bloomsburyhtml/group_members.htm»

“Archive Journals: Bloomsbury Lifestyles and Beliefs”. TATE Gallery of

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London. «http://www2.tate.org.uk/archivejourneys/bloomsburyhtml/group_lifestyle

beliefs.htm»

“Archive Journals: Bloomsbury Influence and Achievements”. TATE Gallery of

London. «http://www2.tate.org.uk/archivejourneys/bloomsburyhtml/group_influenc

eachieve.htm»

Bonett, Helena et al. ‘Introducing The Camden Town Group in Context’, The Camden

Town Group in Context May 2012. «http://www.tate.org.uk/art/research

publications/camden-town-group/introducing-the-camden-town-group-in-context

r1106438»

Goodwin, Crowford D. “The Bloomsbury Group as a Creative Community”. History of

Political Economy. 43(1). 59-82.

«http://hope.dukejournals.org/content/43/1/59.short»

Lisa Tickner. “Modern Life and Modern Subjects”. British Art in the Twentieth Century.

New Haven and London, 2000. 193.

Mussels, Samantha. In the Shadow of Bloomsbury: Representing Vanessa Bell and Dora

Carrington in the Writing of Art History. Ontario: Queen’s University, 1999.

Nicola Moorby. “Her Indoors: Women Artists and Depictions of the Domestic Interior”,

Helena Bonett, Helena et al. The Camden Town Group in Context, May 2012.

«http://www.tate.org.uk/art/research-publications/camden-town-group/Nicola

moorby-her-indoors-women-artists-and-depictions-of-the-domestic-interior

r1104359»

Peppin, Brigid. “The Vorticist I: Women that a Movement Forgot”. Tate Etc. Issue 22, 1

May 2011. «http://www.tate.org.uk/context-comment/articles/women-movement

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forgot»

Rosenquist, Rod. “London, Literature and Blast: The Vorticist as Crowd master”

Flashpoint Magazine. May, 2010. «http://www.flashpointmag.com/blast.htm»

Wolff, Janett. “English Art and Principled aesthetics”. A companion to British Art: 1600 to

the Present. Ed Dana Arnold and David Peters. Oxford: Blackwell Publishing,

2013.

“Women Vorticists: Dismorr, Saunders and the Female Legacy”. The Bight

Old Oak. March, 2013. «http://thebrightoldoak.wordpress.com/2013/03/07/women

vorticists-dismorr-saunders-and-the-female-legacy/»

Representative individuals:

Vanessa Bell (1879-1961)

Vanessa Stephen, was born in 1879 into an upper-middle-class English family, which

was noted for its intellectual and artistic pursuits. She was the daughter of Leslie

Stephen and Julia Princep Duckworth and sister of the well-known writer Virginia

Woolf. In 1913 Vanessa Bell joined with Roger Fry and Duncan Grant to form the

Omega Workshops. Other artists involved included Henri Gaudier-Brzeska, Percy

Wyndham Lewis and Frederick Etchells. Throughout their lives, Bell and Grant worked

together, first at the Omega Workshops and later at Charleston, sharing models and

subjects. Early in her career Bell’s style was almost abstract and Post-impressionistic;

inspired by formalist theories developed by Fry who had become her close friend. She

was heavily involved in the early stages of the Omega Workshops and retained a

lifelong interest in decorative schemes; which would bring pattern and color into

everyday domestic surroundings. Her decorative work was outstanding in its unforced

simplicity. This is seen especially in her book-jacket designs for the Hogarth Press,

which helped establish its distinctive house-style. Her paintings concentrated mostly on

portraits, landscape and domestic space with variations of abstract and representational

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aspects. Yet, despite this impressive career, Bell's reputation is often reduced in the

literature to that of "housemother" of Bloomsbury. Therefore, many of her portraits

illuminate the particular costs and benefits that being a woman of Bloomsbury involved.

They present complicated representations of women expressing, through experimental

modernist form, the conflicting their roles at the time.

Dora Carrington (1893-1932)

Dora de Houghton Carrington was born in Hereford May 29th 1893. She was the fourth

of child of Samuel Carrington, a railway engineer and his wife, Charlotte Houghton. She

was brought up with a very religious and conservative education. Carrington’s main

interest was always decorative arts and she worked continually at both easel paintings

and decorative works throughout her life. She undertook many decorative commissions,

including fresco panels, pub signs, and book illustrations. She also actively produced

and sold painted tiles and glass pictures. However, the majority of her work was

concentrated in the decoration of the homes she shared with Strachey in Harnspray and

Tidmarsh Mill. She traveled throughout Europe and corresponded with artists such as

Henry Lamb, Augustus John, brother of the well-known woman painter Gwen John, and

Virginia Woolf. Although Carrington kept working on art many of her practices have yet

to be recognized as signifiers of professionalism. The fact that she rarely sold her

paintings and earned more with decorative art gave the impression that she was an

amateur artist. She participated in only a handful of exhibitions during her lifetime and

her first solo show did not appear until almost forty years after her death. This reluctance

on her part to exhibit is attributed variously in the literature to her self-effacement, as

well as her involving position as domestic caretaker, her consuming love for Lytton

Strachey, and other gender-related issues. Her painting can be described as uneven and

at times awkward, but always bringing poetic vehemence to her well-constructed image.

She tends to be aligned more with her Slade contemporaries than with Bloomsbury,

since she was often more Pre-Raphaelite than Post-Impressionist.

Gwen John (1876-1939)

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Gwendolen Mary John was born on July 22nd, 1876 in Haverfordwest, Wales. In 1895

she moved to London where she attended the Slade School of Art. Gwen John was

taught by artists like Frederick Brown and Henry Tonks. She lived with her brother,

Augustus John who also studied there. Gwen John exhibited for the first time in the

spring of 1900 at the New English Art Club. Then, in March 1903 she and Augustus

John had a joint exhibition at Carfax & Company. She worked very slowly and

contributed only three pictures to her brother's forty-five, but Augustus was foremost in

appreciating her art. He felt that Gwen’s pictures more than compensated what his own

work lacked in interior feeling and expressiveness. She was a painter chiefly of portraits

and women and children, but that does not mean her art lacks complexity. She was able

to create an autobiographical geography bringing together her room, the Parisian

boulevards, cafés, and public gardens, the countryside around Paris, the river Seine and

the coasts of Brittany. With this spatial assemblage she created a plane of analysis

marked by displacement and movement. What remained an interesting continuity in her

life since her subterranean years in London was her relationship with her cat or rather

the many cats with which she surrounded herself. John wrote many letters about and

around them and made theoretical connections with the notion of becoming animal as a

line of flight in subjectivities. John’s lifestyle and art technique remained unique and

unrepeatable and her persona registered as an enigmatic obscure figure in British Art

History.

Stanislawa de Karlowska (1876-1952)

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Stanislawa de Karlowska, known to her family and friends as ‘Stasia’, was born on 8

May 1876 at the family estate at Szeliwy, near the town of Lowicz in Russian-occupied

Poland. She studied art in Warsaw and Krakow and at the Acadèmie Julian in Paris in

the mid-1890’s. There she met her future husband, artist Robert Bevan. After their

marriage in 1898, they settled in England. They were both founder members of the

London Group, the successor of her work relates closely to what is thought of as

Camden Town painting, using a modern post-impressionist style with bright colors to

depict elements from the local urban environment like the growing industrial landscape,

and the countryside. Karlowska’s work was also inspired by her Polish heritage. The flat

perspectives, intense colors, elongated figures and dream-like atmosphere of her

paintings correspond somewhat with the stylized nature of Eastern European folk art,

inviting comparison with other modern artists also drawing on folk-art traditions such as

the Russian-born Marc Chagall (1887–1985) and the Polish Zofia Stryjenska (1891–

1976). At the beginning, Karlowska’s work remained secondary to her husband’s, at her

own choosing. Every year he spent month’s away painting in the countryside, while

Karlowska often remained at home looking after the children and the house. Following

Bevan’s death in 1925 Karlowska remained at Adamson Road, living on the top two

floors, which had a purpose-built studio. During this period, she created prints and new

paintings, and exhibited with the Society of Wood Engravers. Over the years she went

travelling to Italy, France and Poland, locations which inspired her paintings, for

example, The Quay at Binic, Brittany (1935), as well as many locations around England.

Ethel Sands (1873-1962)

Ethel Sands was born on 6 July 1873 in Newport, Rhode Island. A year after her birth,

the family moved to England where they settled permanently, returning to America for

only two years when she was four. In London, the Sands enjoyed an extremely full

social life, moving within fashionable and important circles that included the

Marlborough House set, centered on the Prince of Wales, the future Edward VII. In 1888

her father died in a riding accident, and in 1896 her mother also died prematurely,

leaving Sands with the responsibility of caring for two younger brothers as well as a

considerable fortune. The conferral of independent means enabled Sands to pursue

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painting without the necessity of supporting herself through the sale of works. Her

works were mostly interiors and still lifes, possibly inspired by the ‘intimiste’ subject

matter, use of color and dry brushwork of Edouard Vuillard (1868–1940). Sands was a

regular exhibitor alongside some of the most important British artists of the time. In

1907 she was asked by Sickert to join the Fitzroy Street Group, where she exhibited her

own paintings and purchased the work of others. Although as a woman she was

excluded from the Camden Town Group, she later became a founder and member of its

successor, the London Group, and exhibited at the Brighton show English Post-

Impressionists, Cubists and Others in 1913.

Nan (Anna Hope) Hudson (1869–1957)

Anna Hope Hudson was born in New York on 10 September 1869. She lived in America

until she was twenty-four years old. She spent most of her life living and travelling in

Europe, particularly in her adopted homeland, France. She elected to go to Paris and

study painting and it was there that she met Ethel Sands, a fellow American and art

student who became her lifelong friend and companion. Hudson was an independent and

unconventional woman for her day. Up until 1906, Hudson’s artistic success was

achieved solely in Paris where she exhibited at the Salon d’Automne. She was brought

into contact with the London art scene largely through Sands, whose sociable nature led

her to make contacts and friends and to act as one of the most well-known society

hostesses of the day. In 1912 she held a joint show with Sands at the Carfax Gallery, the

same exhibiting space of the Camden Town Group, which received largely favorable

reviews. She was among the founder members of the London Group with whom Hudson

exhibited periodically until 1938. It is difficult to describe Hudson’s artistic

development owing to the scarcity of extant paintings, particularly from earlier in her

career. Few of her works are held in public collections and many were lost during the

Second World War. In general, it can be said that she tended to paint landscapes,

particularly with architectural interest, and she liked to apply the paint in patches on to

canvas or cardboard, using the ground itself as part of the colour composition. In this she

was possibly inspired by the work of the French painter Edouard Vuillard (1868–1940).

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Bibliography:

Ascombe, Isabell. Omega and After: Bloomsbury and the Decorative. New York: Thames

and Hudson, 1981

Baron, Wendy. Miss Ethel Sands and Her Circle, London 1977, 24–6.

Chamot, Mary et al. The Modern British Paintings, Drawings and Sculpture.

London, 1964.

Gerzina, Gretchen H. Carrington: Another Look at Bloomsbury. Stanford: Stanford U P,

1985.

Hill, Jane. The Art of Dora Carrington. London: The Herbert Press, 1994.

Holroyd, Michael. Lytton Strachey: A Critical Biography, 2 vols. London, 1968.

Moorby, Nicola. “Ethel Sands 1873–1962, artist biography”, March 2003, in Helena

Bonett, Ysanne Holt, Jennifer Mundy Eds. The Camden Town Group in Context,

May 2012. «http://www.tate.org.uk/art/research-publications/camden-town-group/

ethel-sands»

Mussels, Samantha. In the Shadow of Bloomsbury: Representing Vanessa Bell and Dora

Carrington in the Writing of Art History. Ontario: Queen’s University, 1999.

Simkin, John. “Art: 1900-1950: Dora Carrington” Spartacus Educational.

«http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/ARTcarrington.htm »

Simkin, John. “Art: 1900-1950: Vanessa Bell” Spartacus Educational.

«http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/JbellV.htm»

Simkin, John. “Wales 1400-1960: Gwen John”. Spartacus Educational.

«http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/ARTjohnG.htm»

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Tamboukou, Maria. Nomadic Narratives, Visual Forces: Gwen John’s Letters and

Paintings.

New York: Peter Lang Publishing Inc, 2010.

Modernism in the United States

Main Schools:

The Ashcan School in the United States

The Ashcan School was a group of realist painters from the United States that was

formed during the first years of the 20th Century. The term was first used to refer to this

group in the book Art in America in Modern Times in 1934. Robert Henri is considered

the father of the movement. Their belief was that what is truly beautiful is what is real,

and therefore what should constitute art. Their work consists mostly of New York

landscapes, the city where all the members of the first generation of the group moved

to. Many of those paintings show problems that are iconic of their time like

immigration and poverty. Some art critics see in them an artistic homologous of Walt

Whitman. They differentiate from the group of “The Eight”, since not all of their

members were in both groups and “The Eight” formed some years after the Ashcan

movement. They claimed to be concerned by social issues but since they never adopted

a political view, lately their art has started to be seen less concerned with the social

aspects.

Representative individuals

Cecilia Beaux (1855-1942)

She was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania and was one of the most famous American

painters of her time and a near contemporary of the equally famous Mary Cassatt. In

1876 she attended the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts and after she had

finished her studies there she decided to take a course in porcelain painting at the

National Art Training School. In 1888, after having had success in her hometown

thanks to her first large canvas, she decided to go to France for further training. After

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she returned to her hometown she began to paint portraits, especially of prominent

people and the elite of Philadelphia. During this time she became a very productive

artist; she had her own studio and decided not to marry to give art all her attention. In

1895 she became a teacher in the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts. She had her

work exhibited in Europe and the United States. She received several awards for her

portraits during the years that followed.

Georgia O’Keeffe (1887-1986)

She was born in Sun Prairie, Wisconsin. O’Keeffe was the first daughter of a large

family of farmers. She discovered her passion for art at an early age; she was taught by

a local watercolour artist, Sara Mann, to paint while she was still a very young. From

1905, she studied at various art schools: the Art Institute of Chicago School, the Art

Students League of New York, the University of Virginia and Columbia University's

Teachers College in New York. She later married Alfred Stieglitz, who financed her

first exhibitions. In 1972 she was diagnosed with macular degeneration, which affected

her central vision, making it difficult for her to paint without assistance. Her work in

distinguished by a unique palette that finds it most beautiful contrasts in her paintings of

flowers and other natural forms she found interesting in her surroundings.

Hilda Belcher (1881-1963)

She was an American realist painter, born in Vermont and was part of the Ashcan

school. She decided to go to New York to attend the New York School of Art, where

she met important figures of the modernist movement, especially Robert Henri, who she

considered her mentor. Like many other members of the Ashcan School, she started her

career as an illustrator and years later turned to painting. She became famous after she

won the Strathmore watercolor competition in 1908, especially because she was the

only woman participating among 700 competitors. Belcher also worked as a teacher for

some years, after becoming famous for her caricatures in magazines like Town and

Country. She won several prizes during her life. As part of the Ashcan school, her aim

was to depict real life, which she achieved especially during the second half of her

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career as a painter, but unlike most of the other members, she did not paint life in one of

the big cities.

Violet Oakley (1874-1961)

She was an American muralist, illustrator and stained glass artisan; Violet Oakley was

born in New Jersey in 1874 and is considered part of the American Renaissance mural

movement of the late 19th century. She studied in the Pennsylvania Academy of the

Fine Arts, with Cecilia Beaux as her portraiture teacher. Due to some economic

problems she later decided to change the focus of her art and decided to study in the

Drexel Institute School of Illustration where she met the illustrator Howard Pyle, who

was a great influence in her art style. She is recognized as the first American woman to

receive a public mural commission, since, at the time there were only men muralists in

the United States because it was conceived as an “activity for men”. This public

commission is her most famous mural, located in the Pennsylvania State Capitol.

Bibliography:

Anonymous. “Ashcan School”. Art Movements.

«http://www.artmovements.co.uk/ashcanschool.htm»

Anonymous. “Ashcan School”. History of Art. «http://www.visual-arts-cork.com/history

of- art/ashcan-school.htm»

Anonymous. “Museum History” O’Keeffe Museum.

«http://www.okeeffemuseum.org/history.html»

Hamburger, Susan. “Violet Oakley: Pennsylvania’s Premiere Muralist”. Pennsylvania

Historical Association October 14, 1995.

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Rosete Montiel María de los ÁngelesValle Gracia Andrea Montserrat

Towers Klacsmann, Karen. “Hilda Belcher (1881-1963)“.

«http://www.georgiaencyclopedia.org/articles/arts-culture/hilda-belcher-1881

1963»

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