Design Archives - Page 8 of 9

Violet Oakley

American illustrator and designer

Kura Ensor was an Auckland-based Māori fashion entrepreneur who was part of a renaissance in Māori-influenced design during the 1970s. She ran a successful nationwide fashion business, selling garments which often incorporated Māori names, motifs and patterns. She was a role model for Māori women in business and was dedicated to serving her community.

Phyllis Glory McDonagh

In 1926, three remarkable sisters made history by becoming the first Australian women to own and run a film production company. They were also among the first to produce a talkie in Australia.

Elizabeth Keckley

Born into slavery, Elizabeth Keckley’s story is one of perseverance and ingenuity in the face of seemingly insurmountable odds. As an African American businesswoman and philanthropist, Keckley defied stereotypes and redefined what an African American woman could accomplish in the Nineteenth Century.

Barbara Kruger

Barbara Kruger’s work has an integral place in the history of feminist, postmodern, and conceptual art. Connected with this, Kruger dissects contemporary culture in her unique combinations of image and text, often targeting multiple oppressions or hypocrisies.

Olga Rozanova

Although Rozanova was an important figure in the Russian avant-garde – one of the “Amazons” of early-twentieth-century Russian art – her work has received little sustained critical attention except in Russian-language publications.

Lyubov Popova

Popova’s intense but short career inspired many other Soviet artists of the era. She shaped the development of Russian Revolutionary art through her education, travels, and relationships with other artists and influencers. She is particularly renowned as one of the most influential female artists of the 20th century and noted for her collaboration with other women artists including Nadezhda Udaltsova, Aleksandra Ekster, and Varvara Stepanova. Together they demonstrated the new role women could take as workers following the Revolution.

Corita Kent

During her lifetime, and especially in the twenty years following her death, Kent’s work never quite worked its way into the mainstream. Being a female artist and a nun, she did not fit into the detached, jaded aesthetic narrative of Pop.

Leonor Fini

Leonor Fini was befriended by the whole Parisian artistic community and was one of the most photographed people of the 20th century, resulting in the legacy of “queen of the Paris art world” (expression coined by art critic Sarah Kent). Her popularity in artistic social circles made her the subject of many poems, artworks, and photographs by various artists and writers of her time.

Sophie Taeuber-Arp

Taeuber-Arp is not as well-known as other artists in her circle, despite her deep involvement with the burgeoning European avant-garde and the presence of her works in museum collections across the world. However, this reputation is changing, as evidenced by the 1981 retrospective at the Museum of Modern Art in New York that subsequently traveled to Chicago, Houston, and Montreal. Her work is now generally accepted as part of the story of modernism and Dada, and has drawn increasing attention from scholars and academics. Her work was influential to the growth of Feminist Art of the 1960’s, who viewed her as a trailblazer.