In episode 68 of The Great Women Artists Podcast, Katy Hessel interviews the great sculptor, PHYLLIDA BARLOW !!! [This episode is brought to you by Alighieri jewellery: www.alighieri.co.uk | use the code TGWA at checkout for 10% off!] Simultaneously colossal and intimate, precarious and triumphant, stoic and ephemeral, Phyllida Barlow’s all-engulfing sculptures, made from cement, cardboard, fabric, to chicken wire, don’t just force a redressing of sculpture in art history, but they question the limitless potentials of the versatile medium. Taking influence from her surroundings, and in turn influencing and challenging ours, they distort all sense of perspective, challenge sculptural conventions, and make us breathe, inhabit, and experience the medium in ways that no artist has done before. Full of tension and awkwardness, but also the familiarity of the everyday, for over fifty years Barlow's sculptures have questioned not only the history of the medium, but the role of monuments in modern day society. Born in Newcastle, and raised in postwar London, Barlow studied at Chelsea School of Art, and went on to complete her MA at the Slade, the latter of which she taught at for four decades, until 2009. Barlow has exhibited across the globe at the world’s most renowned museums including, the Serpentine, taking over the Tate’s Duveen Galleries, Haus de Kunst, and in 2017, represented Britain at the Venice Biennale. She is also a Royal Academician. But the reason why we are speaking with Barlow today is because she has not only just published an incredible book on her collected lectures, writings, and interviews – of which a favourite of mine is her on Eva Hesse, aptly titled, Lost for Words – but she is currently the subject of a solo presentation at London’s Highgate Cementary AND an exhibition at Hauser and Wirth, the latter of which features a large-scale ‘sculptural intervention’ consisting of over 100 brightly coloured cement posts more than 20 feet tall, forming a circular barricade, which in typical Barlow style, blocks, stunts, distorts our normal viewing space and forces us to re-situate ourselves in the galleries, resulting in new paths forged, new sight lines experienced. I hope you enjoy this episode! Further links: www.hauserwirth.com/hauser-wirth-ex…phyllida-barlow www.royalacademy.org.uk/article/digit…t-documentary www.hauserwirth.com/artists/2826-phyllida-barlow www.tate.org.uk/whats-on/tate-bri…4-phyllida-barlow hausderkunst.de/en/exhibitions/phyllida-barlow LISTEN NOW + ENJOY!!! Follow us: Katy Hessel: @thegreatwomenartists / @katy.hessel Sound editing by Nada Smiljanic Research assistant: Viva Ruggi Artwork by @thisisaliceskinner Music by Ben Wetherfield www.thegreatwomenartists.com/

In episode 67 of The Great Women Artists Podcast, Katy Hessel interviews the filmmaker Raquel Cecilia Mendieta on her aunt, one of the greatest artists ever to live: Ana Mendieta.  The day of this episode's release: 8 September 2021, is the 36th anniversary of Ana's death, who died aged 36 in 1985.  [This episode is brought to you by Alighieri jewellery: www.alighieri.co.uk | use the code TGWA at checkout for 10% off!] "I use the earth as a canvas and my soul as an instrument." A pioneer of Performance Art who used the body as her primary tool, Mendieta’s career was radically experimental. Born in pre-revolutionHavana, Cuba, Mendieta’s life changed when Castro came to power, and her father(an enemy of the new regime) was imprisoned. Exiled from Cuba and sent toAmerica – arriving in Florida then settling in Iowa, aged 12 – Mendieta remained separated from her parents and birth country for years. Enrolling in the University of Iowa, it was here where she thrived. First experimenting with painting, Mendieta went on to employ the body as her primary medium. Constructing her 'Facial Cosmetic Variations' and 'Facial Hair Transplants', she pioneered the use of props and prosthetics as 'acts of transformations'. But being "possessed by nature",  by 1973, she was exploring her siluetas.  Interrogating themes of memory, history, displacement, and rebirth, Mendieta used her body as her instrument when conducting more than 200 performative and ephemeral ‘sculptures’ (which she called siluetas). Through methods of burning, carving, or planting, Mendieta sought to ‘become one with the earth’, moulding the outlines of her body onto the soil of Iowa, Mexico, and from 1980, Cuba.  In this episode we discuss the pure POWER of Mendieta's work, her connection to the Earth, life in Iowa and NYC and her later career at the American Academy in Rome. Ana was a true pioneer. And speaking to the fantastic Raquel, who has made many beautiful films on her aunt, we get an insight into who she was, her rebellious spirit, love and care for those around her, and pure excitement for her life and work.  Enjoy!!! Further links:  https://www.galerielelong.com/artists/estate-of-ana-mendieta https://jeudepaume.org/en/evenement/ana-mendieta-2/ https://alisonjacques.com/artists/ana-mendieta LISTEN NOW + ENJOY!!! Follow us: Katy Hessel: @thegreatwomenartists / @katy.hessel Sound editing by Nada Smiljanic Research assistant: Viva Ruggi  Artwork by @thisisaliceskinner Music by Ben Wetherfield https://www.thegreatwomenartists.com/

In episode 66 of The Great Women Artists Podcast, Katy Hessel interviews the acclaimed painter, LISA YUSKAVAGE! [This episode is brought to you by Alighieri jewellery: www.alighieri.co.uk | use the code TGWA at checkout for 10% off!] Commanding and vulnerable, inviting and resisting, psychologically intense, addressing shame and provocations, Lisa Yuskavage began her paintings of doll-like, pre-pubescent, semi-naked women in the early 1990s. Often emerging from a technicolored, acid-like pool of saturated pinks, greens, reds, or yellows, Yuskavage combines art historical colouring techniques for her images that are as much about an exploration of light and colour, as they are about the female figure. Belonging to no one but themselves, her figures claim the gaze free from authority and own their sexuality. Born in Philadelphia, and having received her BFA from the Tyler School of Art, Temple University, in 1984 and her MFA from Yale, since the early 1990s, Lisa Yuskavage has been a force in the New York painting scene, whose incredible influence has spread worldwide, especially for younger artists working today – as often mentioned on this podcast – for her bold, radical, pioneering and innovative use of colour, subject, style and form. In museum collections worldwide, including the Hammer, Hirshhorn, ICA Boston, The Met, MoMA, Whitney, SF MoMA and many more, Yuskavage’s work has been the subject of numerous solo exhibitions, including at Institute of Contemporary Art, University of Pennsylvania, Museo Tamayo Arte Contemporáneo, Mexico City, the Aspen Art Museum, and the Baltimore Museum of Art, the latter of which is currently on view until 19 September 2021. But… the reason why we are speaking with Yuskavage today is because this September, 2021, she will unveil a series of new works for an exhibition with David Zwirner in NYC, where she is represented. Titled, New Paintings, the exhibition brings together her signature color-field compositions saturated in jewel-like pigments of red, green, yellow, and pink, with figurative depictions full of theatricality, tension, dynamism and vulnerability, depicting models – which recall the tension between seer and seen – or dramatic scenes derived from the studio or art-school classrooms, all of which are rooted in both art history and the present day. Further links: https://www.davidzwirner.com/artists/lisa-yuskavage https://artbma.org/exhibition/lisa-yuskavage-wilderness https://yuskavage.com/ https://www.davidzwirner.com/exhibitions/2021/more-life/jesse-murry LISTEN NOW + ENJOY!!! Follow us: Katy Hessel: @thegreatwomenartists / @katy.hessel Sound editing by Nada Smiljanic Artwork by @thisisaliceskinner Music by Ben Wetherfield https://www.thegreatwomenartists.com/

WELCOME BACK TO SEASON 6 OF THE GWA PODCAST! In episode 65 of The Great Women Artists Podcast, Katy Hessel interviews the acclaimed poet EILEEN MYLES on the legendary painter, JOAN MITCHELL! [This episode is brought to you by Alighieri jewellery: www.alighieri.co.uk | use the code TGWA at checkout for 10% off!] A resident of New York City since 1974, Eileen Myles has been one of the greatest living poets of the last few decades. Their recent poem Eight Poems and Joan Mitchell’s City Landscape, is featured in the most extensive book of Joan Mitchell to date (published by Yale University Press: https://yalebooks.yale.edu/book/9780300247275/joan-mitchell); a text exploring Myles’s own relationship to the late great artist, whose tough, bold, gestural, almost indestructible 1955 painting, City Landscape, is described by them as “bitch work. It’s tooth and claw”. One of the foremost Abstract Expressionist painters, Joan Mitchell was born in 1925 in Chicago. A competitive figure skater as a kid, Mitchell entered the NY art scene in 1950, and a year later, exhibited in the iconic 1951 Ninth Street Show.  A frequenter of the hard-drinking Cedar Tavern, immersed in the NY 50s poetry scene (she was a great friend of Frank O'Hara) and famed for her feisty personality, as a painter Mitchell was a genius at transforming paint into gusts of light, energy and movement.Applying her oils with strokes that varied from feathery and translucent to thick and aggressive, she looked to the French Impressionists for influence.  Whereas in the first half of the 1950s, Mitchell’s work resembled lyrical, loosely formed shapes, as the decade progressed(following her regular travels to France from ‘55), her work transformed into more intense compositions. At times working on paintings far taller than she was, you can almost imagine her jumping up, fighting the work with industrial, heavyweight brushes.  Whether it be rage at the system or anger at her father, the vigour of her gesture proves her worthy of being recognised as one of the greatest artists of the 20th century. Not to mention the dazzling tones these paintings emits. Witness one in the flesh, and you get lost in her world. As one of the leading poets ALIVE, Myles's take on Mitchell is fascinating -- listen out for the poem they wrote about preparing for the podcast too!  Further links:  https://www.joanmitchellfoundation.org/joan-mitchell https://www.davidzwirner.com/artists/joan-mitchell https://artbma.org/exhibition/joan-mitchell/ https://www.eileenmyles.com/ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gTWH2rRJKXA&ab_channel=LouisianaChannel LISTEN NOW + ENJOY!!! Follow us: Katy Hessel: @thegreatwomenartists / @katy.hessel Sound editing by Nada Smiljanic Research assistant: Viva Ruggi Artwork by @thisisaliceskinner Music by Ben Wetherfield https://www.thegreatwomenartists.com/

In episode 64 of The Great Women Artists Podcast, Katy Hessel interviews the acclaimed writer ALI SMITH (!!!!) on Pauline Boty, Barbara Hepworth, Tacita Dean and Lorenza Mazzetti !!!! [This episode is brought to you by Alighieri jewellery: www.alighieri.co.uk | use the code TGWA at checkout for 10% off!] The FINAL episode of Season 5 of the GWA Podcast, we speak to one of the GREATEST authors and writers in the world, Ali Smith, about the artists who act as the 'spine' for her recently-completed series of four stand-alone novels, grouped as the Seasonal Quartet: Pauline Boty in Autumn, Barbara Hepworth in Winter, Tacita Dean in Spring, and filmmaker Lorenza Mazetti in Summer, who in their own way, as presences as people, spirits, or their work, interweave into each story so beautifully.  Written in the space of four years, between 2016–2020, these books track and are witness to, some of the most unprecedented, and extraordinary events in living history. Beginning with Autumn, known as the first-Brexit novel, the final book in the series, Summer, was written in the midst of the Coronavirus pandemic. Born in Inverness, Scotland, and now based in Cambridge, Ali Smith is acclaimed for her fictional work, and non-fiction writing on some of my favourite artists. The author of Public library and other stories, How to be both, Shire, Artful, and MANY OTHERS, Smith has been shortlisted for the Booker Prize, the Orange Prize, The Man Booker Prize, and has won the Bailey's Prize, the Goldsmiths Prize and the Costa Novel of the Year Award for her brilliant novel, How To Be Both. PAULINE BOTY – AUTUMN One of the most important artists to change the face of British Pop Art (as well as being an Actress, TV star, radio commentator, who read Proust) Pauline Boty EPITOMISED the possibilities of the modern Pop woman. She captured the glamour and vivacity of the 1960s, including those of music stars to film icons, think Marylin to Elvis, Boty worshipped the proliferation of imagery available in the post-War era.  BARBARA HEPWORTH – WINTER The Titan of British sculpture, Hepworth set up a studio in St Ives during World War II, and is hailed for her small-to-colossal hand-carved wooden sculptures. Cast in stone and bronze, sometimes embedded with strings or flashes of colour, and  fluctuating between hard and soft, light and dark, round and straight, solid and hollow, the spirit of Hepworth's work is at the spine of Spring and through Ali's incredible writing makes us SEE differently.  TACITA DEAN – SPRING Filmmaker and artist, Dean, seven-metre-wide work The Montafon Letter is a vast chalk drawing on nine blackboards joined together, looms in Spring (and is also an exhibition visited by the protagonist Richard at the Royal Academy). Dean says in some ways the work about Brexit and about hope; “hope that the last avalanche will uncover us”. Much like Smith's post-Brexit novels.  LORENZA MAZZETTI – SUMMER A new artist for me, this story of the Italian-born filmmaker who came of age in the 1960s is one of the most profound in the history of art. I am not going to tell you anything else other than listen to Ali tell her story.  LINKS TO ALI'S BOOKS! https://www.waterstones.com/book/autumn/ali-smith/9780241973318 https://www.waterstones.com/book/winter/ali-smith/9780241973332 https://www.waterstones.com/book/spring/ali-smith/9780241973356 https://www.waterstones.com/book/summer/ali-smith/9780241973370 We also discuss How To Be Both at the very start! https://www.waterstones.com/book/how-to-be-both/ali-smith/9780141025209 LISTEN NOW + ENJOY!!! Follow us: Katy Hessel: @thegreatwomenartists / @katy.hessel Sound editing by Winnie Simon Artwork by @thisisaliceskinner Music by Ben Wetherfield https://www.thegreatwomenartists.com/

In episode 63 of The Great Women Artists Podcast, Katy Hessel interviews the esteemed curator Emma Ridgway of Modern Art Oxford on the majorly influential, RUTH ASAWA (where she is set to have an exhibition in 2022!!!).  [This episode is brought to you by Alighieri jewellery: www.alighieri.co.uk | use the code TGWA at checkout for 10% off!] Artist, educator, trailblazer and sculptor, Ruth Asawa is up there with the greatest and most influential artists of the entire 20th century, Best known for her looped-wire sculptures that expand form, defy structure, and blurring all illusions between hard and soft, tall and small, strongand fragile, RuthAsawa's works ranged from colossal to small enough to fit in your hand.   The fourth of seven siblings, Ruth Asawa was brought up on a rural farm in California by immigrant parents of Japanese descent. Curious and energetic, she spent her childhood helping out on the farm by wiring beans, and attending Japanese calligraphy classes. But as it was the 1930s, the racial prejudice against people of Japanese heritage was worsening. Following the attack on Pearl Harbour, around 120,000 Japanese-Americans were placed in internment camps, including a teenage Ruth Asawa. Which in this episode, we speak about in great depth.   But against the demonstrative conditions and dehumanising set up, communities came together.Providing education for the young people in the camps, professional artists stepped up, and Ruth was taught by some of the greatest Disney animators of the day. Shaped by her teachers, Asawa set out to be an educator herself. However, despite training for three years, was denied a job due to racial prejudices.  So, in the summer of 1946, she enrolled at Black MountainCollege, and it was here where she flourished: ‘I spent three years there and encountered great teachers who gave me enough stimulation to last me for the rest of my life.’ Taking classes with Josef and Anni Albers to Buckminster Fuller (whose hair she cut for a bit of extra money!), Asawa took the BMC approach to her career, by inextricably linking art with life, and life with art.  Moving to SF in '49, Asawa's legacy in setting up art education is tough to compete with. And it is there that she still remains an icon, with the Ruth Asawa School of Arts still very much in full swing today.  I am not exaggerating when I say this may be the most extraordinary, hopeful, brilliant story in art history. I really hope you enjoy this as much as I did.   LISTEN NOW + ENJOY!!! FURTHER LINKS! https://www.davidzwirner.com/artists/ruth-asawa https://www.modernartoxford.org.uk/event/citizen-of-the-universe/ https://ruthasawa.com/life/black-mountain-college/ Follow us: Katy Hessel: @thegreatwomenartists / @katy.hessel Sound editing by Winnie Simon Artwork by @thisisaliceskinner Music by Ben Wetherfield https://www.thegreatwomenartists.com/ Ruth Asawa: Citizen of the Universe is curated by Emma Ridgway and Vibece Salther, organised in partnership by Modern Art Oxford UK and Stavanger Art Museum Norway, supported by the Terra Foundation for American Art.    Opens 28 May - 21 Aug 2022 at Modern Art Oxford then 1 Oct 2022 - 22 Jan 2023 at Stavanger Art Museum. I CAN'T WAIT!

In episode 62 of The Great Women Artists Podcast, Katy Hessel interviews the esteemed curator CINDY KANG of the Barnes Foundation on the Impressionist giant, BERTHE MORISOT! [This episode is brought to you by Alighieri jewellery: www.alighieri.co.uk | use the code TGWA at checkout for 10% off!] And WOW is this an incredible insight into Morisot, who was the FIRST woman to ever exhibit with the Impressionists in 1874, and THE woman who paved the way for the Modern Parisian woman.  Praised for her quick, feathery, brushstrokes, infused with light and vivid colouring, Morisot's subjects ranged from family life to the fashionable women of Paris. Unlike her male counterparts, Morisot had access to the private boudoirs of women, who she captured full of vivacity, and radiating in modernity. Born into an upper-middle class family, along with her sister, Edma, she showed great passion and skill for art from an early age. As a result, they were encouraged and financed by their wealthy parents, who hired one of the foremost tutors in Paris, who told them they were so good it was a CATASTROPHE!  For the next decade, Morisot would become fully immersed in Parisian life, exhibiting, socialising, and befriending the likes of Édouard Manet, whose brother, Eugène, she would go on to marry. He was fully supportive of her career. Morisot was written about by Émile Zola, and had her work sold by the best picture dealers in Paris.  Continuing to radicalise conventions in painting, during the 1880s, Morisot’s brushwork became increasingly loose. Towards the end of her life, Morisot was veering towards working in a Symbolist fashion, as executed in one of her final paintings of her daughter, Portrait of Miss J. M. (Julie Dreaming), 1894, created the year before her life was sadly cut short due to a battle with pneumonia. LISTEN NOW + ENJOY!!! FURTHER LINKS! Cindy's exhibition:  https://www.barnesfoundation.org/whats-on/morisot https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2018/10/29/berthe-morisot-woman-impressionist-emerges-from-the-margins https://nmwa.org/art/artists/berthe-morisot/ Follow us: Katy Hessel: @thegreatwomenartists / @katy.hessel Sound editing by Winnie Simon Artwork by @thisisaliceskinner Music by Ben Wetherfield https://www.thegreatwomenartists.com/

In episode 61 of The Great Women Artists Podcast, Katy Hessel interviews the esteemed curator and Director of Berlin's Gropius Bau, Dr Stephanie Rosenthal on the legendary artist, YAYOI KUSAMA!!!! [This episode is brought to you by Alighieri jewellery: www.alighieri.co.uk | use the code TGWA at checkout for 10% off!] And WOW is this an incredible insight to the iconic Japanese artist, who works across film to painting, performance, sculpture to installation, drawing and collage, to her famous Infinity Mirror Rooms, who is about to be the subject of a MAJOR exhibition at Gropius Bau (curated by Stephanie!!). Info here: https://www.berlinerfestspiele.de/en/berliner-festspiele/programm/bfs-gesamtprogramm/programmdetail_299677.html Born in Matsumoto City, Japan in 1929, to parents who ran a plant factory, the young Kusama studied painting in Kyoto. Establishing herself in the Japanese art scene from her early twenties, it was after a brief correspondence with none other than GEORGIA O'KEEFFE in the 50s, that she abandoned her native country. She arrived in NYC in 1958, with a suitcase of drawings and one aspiration: “To grab everything that went on in the city and become a star”.  Formidably ambitious, with “mountains of creative energy stored inside myself”, she succeeded. Situating herself amongst the cultural New York avant-garde elite, Kusama immediately began to make paintings evocative of the American style, as seen in her Infinity Net series. However, she went one step further with her microscopic, miniscule, repetitive and monochromatically coloured gestures that bridged both the emotive and visible brush mark of Abstract Expressionism and technical precision of Minimalism.  She went on to create thousands of soft sculptures of in which phallic protrusions covered household objects. Kusama also pushed forward ways of working with performance, installation and underground films... however was often copied by her male contemporaries! In 1973, she moved back to Japan, however in 1993, she returned to the spotlight when representing Japan at the Venice Biennale where she showcased all-encompassing mirror rooms. Re-catapulted to stardom in the western art world, Kusama today remains (arguably) the most famous female artist on the planet: between 2013–2018 she drew in FIVE MILLION visitors alone! LISTEN NOW + ENJOY!!! FURTHER LINKS! Stephanie's exhibition:  https://www.berlinerfestspiele.de/en/berliner-festspiele/programm/bfs-gesamtprogramm/programmdetail_299677.html https://www.victoria-miro.com/artists/31-yayoi-kusama/ For those in NYC! https://www.nybg.org/event/kusama/ ...and in LONDON THIS SUMMER!  https://www.tate.org.uk/whats-on/tate-modern/exhibition/yayoi-kusama-infinity-mirror-roomsWhitney Museum collection!  https://whitney.org/exhibitions/yayoi-kusama#exhibition-artworks https://www.tate.org.uk/art/artists/yayoi-kusama-8094/introduction-yayoi-kusama https://www.davidzwirner.com/artists/yayoi-kusama Follow us: Katy Hessel: @thegreatwomenartists / @katy.hessel Sound editing by Winnie Simon Artwork by @thisisaliceskinner Music by Ben Wetherfield https://www.thegreatwomenartists.com/

In episode 60 of The Great Women Artists Podcast, Katy Hessel interviewsone of the greatest artists of our time, the inimitable JULIE MEHRETU !!!! [This episode is brought to you by Alighieri jewellery: www.alighieri.co.uk | use the code TGWA at checkout for 10% off!] Revolutionising abstract painting for the twenty-first century, filled with frenzied vortexes and orderly and disorderly lines, Mehretu is acclaimed for her all-encompassing, large-scale, gestural paintings built up through layers of acrylic paint, and overlaid with frenetic mark-making. Referencing art history – from the Old Masters, dynamism of the Italian Futurists to the enveloping scale of Abstract Expressionism – and past civilizations while addressing the most immediate conditions of our contemporary moment, including migration, revolution, climate change, global capitalism, and technology, Mehretu’s points of departure are architecture, people and the city. In particular, the densely populated urban environments of the 21st Century. Working on a colossal scale, with intricate details and pockets of information when witnessed up close, step back and Mehretu’s paintings enable you to survey a world from afar. Erupting with colour, line, energy and movement, they evoke histories both evolving and collapsing, much like the conflictingly progressive, yet backward, world we find ourselves in today. Born in Ethiopia, and from an early age, raised in the United States, where she lives and works today, Mehretu studied at the Kalamazoo College, Michigan, followed by RISD. An artist-in-resident at the esteemed Studio Museum in Harlem in the early 2000s, Mehretu has since gone on to exhibit extensively around the world, from solo exhibitions at the Louisiana in Copenhagen to the Guggenheim in New York City, to numerously participating in Biennales all over the globe, from Venice to Sydney to Istanbul. She is a recipient of the American Art Award from the Whitney Museum of American Art, the prestigious MacArthur Fellows Award, and has been awarded the US Department of State Medal of Arts Award. But the reason why we are speaking today, is because Mehretu is currently the subject of a major touring retrospective of her work from the last 25 years, co-curated by esteemed curators Christine Y. Kim with Rujeko Hockley, which is currently on view at The Whitney, was previously at LACMA and the High Museum of Art, Atlanta, Georgia, and will go on to the Walker Art Center, Minneapolis. And unsurprisingly, has been met with astonishing reviews! Check out her Whitney show here: https://whitney.org/exhibitions/julie-mehretu And WOW, is this one of the most enriching, enlightening conversations I have ever had. THANK YOU JULIE!!! Works discussed:  Migration Direction Map (Large), 1996 Untitled (Yellow with Ellipses), 1998 Renegrade Excavation, 2001 Stadia Series, 2004 Mogamma Seres, 2012 Conjured Parts (eye), Ferguson, 2016 FURTHER LINKS! https://whitecube.com/artists/artist/julie_mehretu https://www.tate.org.uk/art/artworks/mehretu-mogamma-a-painting-in-four-parts-part-3-t13997 https://www.lacma.org/art/exhibition/julie-mehretu https://www.nytimes.com/2021/03/21/arts/design/julie-mehretu-and-success.html Follow us: Katy Hessel: @thegreatwomenartists / @katy.hessel Sound editing by Winnie Simon Artwork by @thisisaliceskinner Music by Ben Wetherfield https://www.thegreatwomenartists.com/

In episode 59 of The Great Women Artists Podcast, Katy Hessel interviews acclaimed writer JENNIFER HIGGIE on the great Parisian painter, Suzanne Valadon (1863–1938) !!!! [This episode is brought to you by Alighieri jewellery: www.alighieri.co.uk | use the code TGWA at checkout for 10% off!] And WOW, is this one of the greatest stories in art history of the acrobat-turned-artist-model-turned-artist Valadon (born Marie-Clémentine), who grew up in Montmartre, the bohemian quarter of Paris; supported herself from the age of ten; but whose life took a turn after a fall from an acrobat in her early teens!  Modelling for the likes of Renoir to Toulouse-Lautrec, despite her lack of finances to afford formal art classes, she learnt via the backdoor: by studying her male acquaintances, and close friend Edgar Degas oversaw drawing.  Known as a wild character (who spent earnings on lavish fur coats), Valadon had a complicated personal life and was often caught up in passionate love affairs (including breaking the heart of composer, Erik Satie). Taking influence from the glittering, shard-like surfaces as pioneered by the Impressionists, at the dawn of the new century, she had developed a distinct language. By 1909, she was painting professionally. Defying all gender conventions and exuding the new freedoms of women, she painted herself nude alongside Utter, (her electrician lover twenty-one-years-junior), swept up in an overgrown Eden as characters Adam and Eve.  In 1911, at aged 46, Valadon had a solo exhibition at the gallery of renowned dealer (and former clown!) Clovis Sagot, and soon cemented herself as a regular exhibitor at the Paris Salon. Within the next few years, she would stage more successful exhibitions, and in the 1920s produced her best work yet. One of which was her monumental self-portrait, The Blue Room, 1923. Lying leisurely in striped trousers and a strapped top, with a cigarette hanging out her mouth and books pushed to the back of the bed, Valadon affirmed her independence and room of one’s own with assured confidence and character. She was a modern Parisian woman in the 1920s, who could do whatever she wanted, whenever she pleased. She rose to the peak of her fame in the 1920s, and had four major retrospective exhibitions during her lifetime. Through her paintings and prints, Valadon transformed the genre of the female nude by providing an insightful expression of women’s experiences. Don't miss this AMAZING story as told by Higgie, whose INCREDIBLE book "The Mirror and the Palette: 500 Years of Women's Self Portraits" has just been released! See here: https://www.waterstones.com/book/the-mirror-and-the-palette/jennifer-higgie/9781474613774 WORKS DISCUSSED! The Blue Room (1923)  Adam and Eve (1909) The Joy of Life (1911)  Family Portrait (1912) Self Portrait (1927) Portrait of Erik Satie (1892) PAINTINGS FEATURING VALADON! The Hangover (1889) by Toulouse-Lautrec Dance at Bougival (1883) by Renoir Follow us: Katy Hessel: @thegreatwomenartists / @katy.hessel Sound editing by Winnie Simon Artwork by @thisisaliceskinner Music by Ben Wetherfield https://www.thegreatwomenartists.com/