Strong Women

No other artist of Classical Modernism has achieved a similar mythical status to that of Paula Modersohn-Becker. At the same time, the view of her work is often distorted by clichés. This comprehensive publication pays particular attention to the progressive nature of Modersohn’s works, in which this early representative of the avant-garde defied all social and artistic conventions.

The English illustrator Anna Atkins (1799–1871) was in every respect a modern woman. For the publication of her plant collections she used the latest technology, the recently invented cyanotype. In 1843 she used the process to create the first photo book in history, with images of breathtaking beauty and originality which often look like modern art.

Phyllida Barlow (*1944) tests boundaries with her monumental sculptures in an eccentric yet humorous manner, reflecting on the relationship with our environment through her use of industrial and everyday materials. With impressive installation photos and never-before-seen archival material the publication presents Barlow’s unique oeuvre from her early works until the present day.

Shuvinai Ashoona (*1961) is a third-generation Inuit artist based in Kinngait, Nunavut, Canada. Best known for her highly personal and imaginative iconography, Shuvinai Ashoona’s imagery ranges from closely observed naturalistic scenes of her Arctic home to monstrous  and fantastical visions.

Pioneering Pakistani American artist Shahzia Sikander is one of the most influential artists working today. Sikander is widely celebrated for expanding and subverting miniature painting to explore gender roles and sexuality, cultural identity, racial narratives, and colonial and postcolonial histories.

Inspired by a private archive and featuring contemporary work by artists who acknowledge the continued relevance of Angela Davis’s experience and politics, the essays, interviews and images in this book provide a compelling and layered narrative of her journey through the junctures of race, gender, economics and politics.

Frida Kahlo was just one of them: between 1930 and the 1960s many more women artists contributed to the Surrealist movement than has hitherto been assumed. The male Surrealists surrounding André Breton mostly saw them only as partners or models, but this volume shows how much more these women artists had to offer.

Teresa Margolles abstracts the subject of terror: she extracts the body into abstract forms which are manifest in fired bricks or in mud, water and blood-soaked cloths. They form a memorial to the victims of the Mexican drug wars and the waves of migration.

Yoko Ono is a leading experimental and avant-garde artist. In Tokyo during the 1950s, she introduced original questions about the concept of art and the art object, breaking down the traditional boundaries between branches of art. She has since been associated with conceptual art, performance, Fluxus, and 1960s happenings. Through her performances and activism, she created a new kind of relationship with both spectators and fellow artists – including her late husband, John Lennon – ...

For almost fifty years, Senga Nengudi (b. 1943, USA) has shaped an œuvre that inhabits a specific and unique place between sculpture, dance and performance. Her iconic R.S.V.P sculptures – performative objects made from pantyhose and materials such as sand and stone – have been acquired by important American museums. The publication accompanies the first solo exhibition of Nengudi in Germany at the Lenbachhaus, Munich.