How Well Do You Know These Female Artists?

French American artist Louise Bourgeois began creating sculptures of spiders toward the end of her career, but the eye-catching arachnids came to be her most iconic works. Her largest spider, made from steel, is so big, at over 30 ft high, it can only be displayed outside or in an industrial-scale space. The work, called “Maman,” honors the spider’s patience and usefulness, and allows visitors to walk around its eight spindly legs.

Helen Frankenthaler’s art career spanned six decades, and by the end of it she was considered one of the foremost American artists of the 20th century. Frankenthaler developed the soak-stain painting technique, in which thinned paint is poured directly onto an unprimed canvas. Her work is seen as key in the development of the branch of abstract expressionism known as color field painting.

Augusta Savage’s most famous sculpture is “The Harp,” created for the 1939 World’s Fair in New York. The work was inspired by a line from a 1900 poem by writer and civil rights activist James Weldon Johnson: “Lift every voice and sing.” The 16-foot-tall sculpture depicted 12 African American singers in the shape of a harp. Unfortunately, the original piece was destroyed after the fair closed, but many smaller versions were later created.

French artist Élisabeth Vigée-Lebrun’s father was a noted portraitist, and she learned to paint at a young age. Her talent was quickly noticed, and in 1779 she was summoned to Versailles to paint the French queen, Marie Antoinette. The two got along so well that Vigée-Lebrun went on to paint many more portraits of the queen. Over her long and successful career, Vigée-Lebrun created more than 900 paintings, the majority of which were portraits.

After 38 years as an art teacher in the public schools of Washington D.C., Alma Thomas retired and began to focus on her own creative work. She created abstract paintings inspired by the changing colors as light moved across the plants and flowers in her garden. Although she came to her painting career later in life, Thomas became one of the key players in the Washington Color School, an abstract expressionist art movement of the mid-20th century.

French artist Rosa Bonheur is best known for her paintings of animals. One of her most famous works is “The Horse Fair,” an enormous canvas showing a Paris horse market. To create the painting, Bonheur spent many months sketching at the market — dressed as a man to escape attention. The completed painting was first shown at the Paris Salon, and today hangs in the Met in New York City.

Polish artist Tamara De Lempicka’s glamorous paintings typified the Art Deco style of the 1930s. De Lempicka rebelled against standard ideas of female domesticity, and instead depicted women (and often herself) as strong and independent. One of her most famous works is “Tamara in a Green Bugatti,” a portrait of herself in the driver’s seat of a luxury car.

Mary Cassatt was born in Pennsylvania but studied art in Paris. In 1868, her painting “The Mandolin Player” was accepted to be shown at the Paris Salon. Cassatt focused on figurative painting and her talent caught the eye of French impressionist Edgar Degas. In 1877, he invited her to exhibit her works with him and his fellow impressionist painters. Cassatt worked closely with the group between 1879 and 1886, and was one of the only Americans associated with the movement.

Mexican artist Frida Kahlo’s father built La Casa Azul (the Blue House) in Mexico City in 1904. The house, with its cobalt blue walls, was where Kahlo lived and worked for much of her life, along with her husband, fellow artist Diego Rivera. Today, visitors can take a tour of the home, which is filled with Kahlo’s artwork, her collection of Mexican folk art, and many personal possessions.

Georgia O’Keeffe is considered one of the most significant artists of the 20th century, and is known as the “mother of American modernism.” Her radical close-up paintings of flowers brought her widespread recognition and success. O’Keeffe is also strongly associated with New Mexico, where she spent much of her time, and where the desert landscape inspired many of her most famous works.