The Artists : Kara, Margaret, Ruth, Eva, Cecily

The artists here have been selected from various lists we found online from Google searches. We learnt so much during these searches and realized how much work needs to be done in terms of equality, not just gender but also race. We have a long way to go. 

Kara Elizabeth Walker (born 26 November 1969) is an American contemporary painter, silhouettist, print-maker, installation artist, and film-maker who explores race, gender, sexuality, violence, and identity in her work. She is best known for her room-size tableaux of black cut-paper silhouettes. The black and white silhouettes confront the realities of history, while also using the stereotypes from the era of slavery to relate to persistent modern-day concerns. Read more about Kara here: The Art Story

Margaret Leisha Kilgallen (born 28 October 1967) was an American artist. Though a contemporary artist, her work showed a strong influence from folk art. Early experiences as a librarian and bookbinder contributed to her encyclopedic knowledge of signs, drawn from American folk tradition, printmaking, and letterpress. Kilgallen had a love of “things that show the evidence of the human hand.” She died at age 33 of breast cancer. Read more about Margaret here: Artnet.com

Ruth Aiko Asawa (born 24 January 1926) was an American sculptor. She was known in San Francisco as the "Fountain Lady". While her technique for making her sculptures resembles weaving, however, Asawa did not study weaving nor did she use fiber materials. Asawa experimented with crocheted wire sculptures of abstract forms that appear as three-dimensional line drawings. She learned the basic technique while in Toluca, Mexico, where villagers used a similar technique to make baskets from galvanized wire. She was a driving force behind the creation of the San Francisco School of the Arts,which was renamed the Ruth Asawa San Francisco School of the Arts in 2010 in tribute to her. Read more about Ruth here: Britannica.com

Eva Hesse (11 January 1936), was a German-born American sculptor, known for her pioneering work in materials such as latex, fiberglass, and plastics. She is one of the artists who ushered in the post minimal art movement in the 1960s. Her family fled the Nazis and arrived in New York in 1939. When Hesse was ten years old, her mother committed suicide. Racked with anxiety throughout most of her life, Hesse nonetheless persevered in her single-minded pursuit of making art. She attended the School of Industrial Art, then Pratt Institute in Brooklyn in 1952, and Cooper Union from 1954 to 1957. After winning a scholarship to the Yale Norfolk Summer School of Music and Art, Norfolk, Connecticut, in 1957, she was accepted by the School of Art and Architecture at Yale University, New Haven, where she studied painting with Josef Albers. In 1959, Hesse received her B.F.A. from Yale and returned to New York, where she worked as a textile designer. Read more about Eva here: The Art Story

Cecily Brown (born in 1969) is a British painter. The sexuality and eroticism of Brown's depictions of expressive figures and nudes are echoed in rich colors, luscious paint handling, and animated brushwork; her work combines representational and abstract elements. Her tactile technique stands out among contemporaries and links her to the art movement Abstract Expressionism. Read more about Cecily here: The Art Story 

All excerpts from Wikipedia, thanks Wiki!