Abstraction, color and feminine avant-gardes

Top 50 women abstract painters

From Hilma af Klint, Sonia Delaunay, Sophie Taeuber-Arp, Lyubov Popova and Lee Krasner to Joan Mitchell, Helen Frankenthaler, Bridget Riley, Carmen Herrera, Lygia Clark, Julie Mehretu and Yayoi Kusama, here are fifty major artists of abstraction.

The history of abstraction has often been told around a few male figures. Yet women have played a fundamental role in almost all of its great ruptures: spiritualism, orphism, constructivism, abstract expressionism, Color Field, Op art, neo-concretism, algorithmic art and contemporary abstraction.

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Hilma af Klint, pionnière de l’abstraction

Before the grid

Another story of abstraction

Even before abstraction became an official narrative, Hilma af Klint was already painting spiritual forms of astonishing audacity. Sonia Delaunay circulated color in fashion, books and everyday life. Taeuber-Arp, Popova, Ekster and Rozanova constructed geometric languages that changed painting, stage, textiles and space.

In the 20th century, abstraction then moved from New York to Paris, from Sao Paulo to Caracas, from London to Tokyo. It becomes gesture, grid, colored field, network, optical vibration, cartography, environment or almost silence. This Top 50 brings together these lines of force by giving women artists the central place they deserve.

Top 1 to 10

Pioneers of modern abstraction

Af Klint, Delaunay, Taeuber-Arp, Popova, Ekster, Rozanova, Goncharova, Stepanova, O'Keeffe and Agnes Martin show that abstraction was written very early in the feminine form.

Ranks 11 to 20

New York School, Color Field and free gestures

Krasner, Mitchell, Frankenthaler, Elaine de Kooning, Hartigan, Thomas, Sterne, Fine, Sobel and Gechtoff give American abstraction multiple energy.

Ranks 21 to 30

Op art, geometry, Brazil and open spaces

DeFeo, Riley, Herrera, Clark, Pape, Schendel, Gego, Vieira da Silva, Reigl and Etel Adnan shift abstraction towards the eye, the body, the line and the inner landscape.

Ranks 31 to 40

Kinetics, color, systems and contemporaries

Boto, Azurdia, Alfelt, Clausen, Murray, Rothenberg, Mehretu, Morris, Kusama and Drexler connect abstraction, pop, cartography, rhythm and memory.

Ranks 41 to 50

Matter, dissolved figure and current legacies

Matter, Bartlett, Godwin, Jaffe, Molnár, Dumas, Brown, Hurtado, Minujin and Höch show that abstraction can remain open to figure, collage, body and experience.

Method

How the 50 artists were selected

The selection favors artists who have lastingly transformed abstract painting: invention of a language, role in an avant-garde, influence on a stage, formal radicalism, major relationship to color, gesture, geometry or space.

The ranking balances historical pioneers, Russian abstraction, abstract expressionism, Color Field, Op art, Latin American neo-concretism and several contemporary practices. Some artists still touch on figures or collage, but their contribution to abstraction remains decisive.

Where to start?

Three simple courses

For pioneers, start with Hilma af Klint, Sonia Delaunay, Sophie Taeuber-Arp, Lyubov Popova, Aleksandra Ekster and Olga Rozanova. For American abstraction, continue with Lee Krasner, Joan Mitchell, Helen Frankenthaler, Elaine de Kooning, Grace Hartigan, Alma Thomas and Agnes Martin.

For geometric and international abstraction, look at Bridget Riley, Carmen Herrera, Lygia Clark, Lygia Pape, Gego, Vera Molnár, Shirley Jaffe, Julie Mehretu, Sarah Morris and Yayoi Kusama.

Abstraction has never been closed territory

These fifty artists show that abstraction is not just a matter of pure forms. It can be spiritual, political, textile, bodily, optical, algorithmic, cosmic, intimate or monumental.

From the grid to the gesture, from the circle to the colored field, from the line to the network, women abstract painters have given modernity some of its most daring images.

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