The art world has long been criticized for not giving female artists their due. Great Women Sculptors—a new tome from Phaidon—is looking to change that narrative.
Featuring 300 female artists from 64 countries, and spanning 500 years of history, the book highlights how women have contributed to and shaped our culture. Not only are the works of notable creatives such as Yayoi Kusama, Ruth Asawa, and Sarah Sze, among others, included, but each entry is accompanied by explanatory text about the artist’s overall practice.
Holly Hendry, Body Language (2022). Photo by Todd-White Art Photography, courtesy the artist and Stephen Friedman Gallery.
An installation view of Agnes Denes’s The Living Pyramid (2015). Photo courtesy of Leslie Tonkonow Artworks + Projects, and Socrates Sculpture Park.
Great Woman Sculptors joins the previously released Great Women Painters and Great Women Artists, and the timing could not be more pertinent. According to artnet, of the $196.6 billion spent at auction between 2008 and early 2019, only $4 billion—about 2% of the total—went towards work made by women. As authors Julia Halperin and Charlotte Burns point out, in that same time the works of Picasso alone brought in $4.8 billion, more than every female artist combined. However, as Phaidon notes, the past five years has seen a change of pace, with the Metropolitan Museum of Art commissioning more façades from women sculptors, and Louise Bourgeois’s Spider selling for a record-breaking $32.1 million.
Cliché as it may be, the future finally seems female.
Great Women Sculptors (Phaidon) is available online and in stores now. Lead image: Teresita Fernández, Fire (2005). Photo courtesy the artist and Lehmann Maupin, New York, Hong Kong, Seoul, and London.