Florine Stettheimer: Feminist Provocateur Florine Stettheimer didn’t talk much. During her family’s Salons, attended by New York’s avant-garde during the 1920s-early 40s, she let her sisters lead the discussion. However, she was an acute and opinionated observer of the people and rapidly changing world around her. A feminist, Florine Stettheimer understood the provocative nature of basing her compositions on the rarely seen female point of view as well as the significance of her choice to create an overtly feminine style.... Decades before other artists, Stettheimer depicted a number of challenging subjects that remain controversial and relevant today. Yet more than 100 years after she painted the first ever full-length nude self portrait by a professional woman artist, she continues too often to be described as an eccentric spinster, so disheartened by not selling her work at an early exhibition that she stopped exhibiting publicly and only showed her work to friends at her private salon. Stettheimer never painted 'fantasies' — her works are all based on factual, thoroughly researched details — and her style and subject matter were carefully chosen. She prophetically chose to portray unique subjects, including race, sexual orientation, gender, and religion, in an equitable and open fashion. (Fascinating article continues at http://hyperallergic.com/329408/florine-stettheimer-feminist-provocateur/) Florine Stettheimer was born in Rochester, NY. She grew up largely abroad and took her first art classes in Germany, continuing her training at New York’s Art Students’ League when the family moved there in 1892. After more years in Europe, she returned to New York at the outbreak of World War I in 1914 and there began to formulate her own characteristic modernist style using expressively attenuated forms and brilliant colors to incisively and satirically explore her world.... [http://arthistorynewsreport.blogspot.nl/2016/03/womens-contributions-to-modernism.html] undefined

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