Women Painting Women

May 15, 2022 - September 25, 2022
Emma Amos, Three Figures, 1966

Emma Amos
Three Figures, 1966 (detail)
Oil on canvas
60 x 50 inches
John and Susan Horseman Collection
Courtesy RYAN LEE Gallery, New York
© Emma Amos

May 15, 2022 - September 25, 2022

Women Painting Women is a thematic exhibition featuring 46 female artists who choose women as subject matter in their works. This presentation includes approximately 50 evocative portraits that span the late 1960s to the present. International in scope, Women Painting Women recognizes female perspectives that have been underrepresented in the history of postwar figuration. Painting is the focus of the exhibition, as traditionally it has been a privileged medium for portraiture, particularly for white male artists. The artists here use painting and women as subject matter as vehicles for change and range from early trailblazers like Alice Neel and Emma Amos to emerging artists such as Jordan Casteel and Apolonia Sokol. Some, such as Jenny Saville, work on large canvases, producing images that dwarf the space around them, while others, including Somaya Critchlow, paint on a modest scale that invites close viewing. All place women—their bodies, gestures, and individuality—at the forefront. 

Four themes trend in the works included in Women Painting Women: The Body, Nature Personified, Color as Portrait, and Selfhood. Through these themes, the artists conceive new ways to activate and elaborate on the portrayal of women. Replete with complexities, realness, abjection, beauty, complications, everydayness, and joy, the portraits in this exhibition make way for female artists to share the stage with their male counterparts in defining the image of woman and how it has evolved.

 

Rita Ackermann
Njideka Akunyili Crosby
Emma Amos 
María Berrío
Louise Bonnet
Lisa Brice
Joan Brown
Jordan Casteel
Somaya Critchlow
Kim Dingle
Marlene Dumas
Celeste Dupuy-Spencer
Nicole Eisenman
Tracey Emin
Natalie Frank
Hope Gangloff
Eunice Golden
Jenna Gribbon
Alex Heilbron
Ania Hobson
Luchita Hurtado
Chantal Joffe
Hayv Kahraman
Maria Lassnig
Christiane Lyons
Danielle Mckinney
Marilyn Minter
Alice Neel
Elizabeth Peyton
Paula Rego
Faith Ringgold
Deborah Roberts
Susan Rothenberg
Jenny Saville
Dana Schutz
Joan Semmel
Amy Sherald
Lorna Simpson
Arpita Singh
Sylvia Sleigh
Apolonia Sokol
May Stevens
Claire Tabouret
Mickalene Thomas
Nicola Tyson
Lisa Yuskavage

 

Organized by the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth and curated by Andrea Karnes, chief curator. 

For a virtual tour of Women Painting Women, please register here.

This exhibition contains nudity and mature/explicit content.

 

Lead exhibition support for Women Painting Women is generously provided by the Texas Commission on the Arts. Major support is provided by the Fort Worth Tourism Public Improvement District, with additional support from the Alturas Foundation, the Fort Worth Promotion and Development Fund, and RL Fine Arts.

Women Painting Women Sponsors
Emma Amos, Three Figures, 1966

Emma Amos
Three Figures, 1966
Oil on canvas
60 x 50 inches
John and Susan Horseman Collection
Courtesy RYAN LEE Gallery, New York
© Emma Amos

Emma Amos
Three Figures, 1966 (detail)
Oil on canvas
60 x 50 inches
John and Susan Horseman Collection
Courtesy RYAN LEE Gallery, New York
© Emma Amos