Maud Wagner, 1877-1961

Photo credit - Dj Lu - Juegasiempre @ flickr

The first female professional Tattoo artist in the US.

Born as Maud Stevens in Lyon County, Kansas. She became an acrobat and worked in various traveling circuses as an aerialist and contortionist in her youth. At the age of 27 (1904), while performing at the Louisiana Purchase Exposition, she met Gus Wagner, a tattoo artist known as the Tattooed Globetrotter. He liked her, and she was fascinated by the art of tattoos, so they agreed on a barter: a date in exchange for a tattooing lesson. She became his canvas and later a tattoo artist herself. Even though the modern machine was available, they used the hand-poked method, working with a manual stick, the last tattoo artists to continue tattooing with the traditional technique.
 

After a few years, they got married, and soon after, they left the circus to travel in the US, working as tattoo artists and tattooed attractions, performing in vaudeville houses and county fairs. Their traveling brought tattoo artistry from the coastal cities to the inland, growing this art in the US and making it approachable to all, not only sailors and circus performers.

Her tattoos were typical for the early 20th century, including patriotic symbols, women, lions, snakes, butterflies, horses, monkeys, and trees. She even tattooed her name on her arm. At a time when women had limited rights and many social restrictions, she was one of those who broke down the barriers, not only getting tattoos but becoming the first woman in the US to be known as a tattoo artist.

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Fun Facts

  • She became a tattoo artist despite her parent's objection.
  • She refused to let her daughter get any tattoos, and when her daughter Lovetta got older and became a tattoo artist as well, she was one of a few tattoo artists without ever been touched by ink.

Creations By and About Her

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Category: Activism & Feminism and Arts
Tags: Painter

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Alma Thomas One of Her Paintings WWP
Arts

Alma Thomas, 1891-1978

One of the major American abstract painters of the 20th century.

Alma Woodsey Thomas was born in Columbus, Georgia, to an upper-middle-class family. Her family was active in the Black community in town and often hosted art and literary salons. She showed artistic abilities from a young age, creating sculptures and puppets out of clay from the river behind her house. In 1907, racial violence increased in the South, and at 16, Thomas and her family moved to Washington, DC. She attended the segregated Armstrong Technical High School, where she had her first art class. She aspired to become an architect, and since it was an unusual profession for women at the time, she decided to study kindergarten education instead. In 1914, at 23, she began her 36 years career as a teacher. In 1921, at the age of 30, Thomas returned to school as a home economics student at Howard University. Soon after, she switched to fine art in the new art department, becoming the first student to graduate the program and probably the first Black woman in the US to earn a bachelor’s degree in art. At 33, with her new specialization, Thomas began teaching art at Shaw Junior High School, leaving for her retirement 36 years later. She also founded a community arts program for children while attending similar programs for adults. In 1930, she began taking summer courses at Columbia University, earning a Master’s in art education at 43 years old. In this period, her art was influenced by the French School of Painting, focusing on landscapes and still-life painted in an impressionist style. During the 1940s, she was part of The Little Paris Group – a community of Black Washington artists that helped beginner artists improve their techniques. It had inspired her to further her academic education, and for the next ten years, she took night and weekend classes in Art History and Painting at the American University. At the time, her art evolved from figurative painting to abstracts, experimenting with shapes and colors, and she became associated with the Washington Color School – an abstract expressionist art movement. Over the years, Thomas continued painting, but only after she retired from teaching did she become a full-time professional artist. At 69, she began to translate all the theoretical and practical education she acquired over the decades into her own art with a unique point of view. She became known for her colorful paintings of abstracted shapes and patterns, as can be seen in her series of Earth Paintings, in which she painted abstract circles that reference the rows of azaleas and cherry blossoms that grow in Washington DC. In 1966, at the age of 75, Thomas had her first retrospective exhibition at Howard University. She continued to create new work, such as the Space series, inspired by the moon landing in 1969 and displaying it in various venues, such as the Corcoran Gallery of Art and the Metropolitan Museum of Art. In 1972 she became the first black woman to have a solo exhibition at the Whitney Museum of American Art. Thomas died at the age of 87 following aortic surgery. This post is also available in: Español Read more...
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Arts

Amrita Sher-Gil, 1913-1941

A Hungarian-Indian painter who pioneered the modern movement in Indian art.

Amrita Sher-Gil was born in Budapest, then in the Kingdom of Hungary. Her father was an Indian Punjabi Sikh aristocrat scholar, and her mother was a Hungarian-Jewish opera singer. In 1921, when she was eight, the family moved to Summer Hill, Shimla, India. From a young age, Sher-Gil showed talent in painting but started her formal training only when arriving in India. She also learned piano and violin, and within a year of their arrival, she played in concerts at Shimla’s Gaiety Theatre. In 1924, at 11, she moved with her mother to Italy for a year, where she attended an art school in Florence and found inspiration in the works of the great Italian masters. At 16, she returned to Europe to get training as a painter in Paris. First, she studied at the Académie de la Grande Chaumière and later at the École des Beaux-Arts. At the time, she drew inspiration from Western art, especially the post-impressionism style, and included self-portraits, portraits of friends and classmates, still life, nudes, and Parisian life. At 19, she had her breakthrough with her painting Young Girls, for which she was awarded a gold medal and gained membership at the Associate of the Grand Salon in Paris, the youngest ever and the only Asian to become a member. In 1934, longings drew her back to India, and three years later, she embarked on a tour to South India to discover and explore her Indian roots. Inspired by the people and the scenery, especially the wall paintings of the Ajanta Caves, Sher-Gil began to incorporate her Western techniques with the Indian aesthetic. This new innovative style separated her from her contemporaries, particularly her use of colors, contrasting the pale tones of Bengal art. By then, Sher-Gil claimed to have found her ‘artistic mission,’ which was expressing the life of the Indian people through the canvas, as can be seen in her South Indian trilogy – Brahmacharis, Bride’s Toilet, and South Indian Villagers Going to Market. At 25, she married her Hungarian first cousin, Dr. Viktor Egan, and they settled near her paternal family in Saraya, in what is today Uttar Pradesh. There, she focused on rural life and began experimenting with the 17th-century Mughal miniatures painting style, as seen in her works In the Ladies, Village Scene, and Siesta. In 1941, Sher-Gil and her husband moved to Lahore, where she worked on her first major solo exhibition. She became ill only a few days before the show’s opening and slipped into a comma. She died a few days later, at the age of 28. Sher-Gil’s artistic style has influenced generations of Indian artists, and she is considered one of the significant avant-garde women artists of the early 20th century. This post is also available in: Español Read more...
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Media

Anne Briardy Mergen, 1906-1994

An editorial cartoonist, the first and only woman editorial cartoonist in the US until the 1950s'.

Anne Briardy Mergen was born in Omaha, Nebraska. Discovering her love for art from a young age, she went on to study commercial art at the American Academy of Art in Chicago. At the age of 20, she moved with her family to Miami, Florida, where she worked as a fashion advertising artist for a local department store. At the age of 26, she married Frank Mergen, and the couple had two children. In 1933, at the age of 27, Mergen tried her luck and submitted some fashion drawings to the Miami Daily News. Her unique perspective, style, and skill caught the editor’s attention, and the paper began publishing her cartoons. Her first published drawing was a one-page fashion story titled “Anne and Peg’s Scrapbook.” Soon, the strip was expanded into a two-page feature and published for three years. In that same year, the newspaper published Mergen’s first political cartoon. After three years, she was appointed the editorial cartoonist of the newspaper, the first and only female editorial cartoonist in the US. In her cartoons, Mergen covered local, national, and international political and social issues. From tourism in Florida to the Great Depression, World War II, the Polio epidemic, and the Iron Curtain. Her witty cartoons became the readers’ favorite, and Mergen gained national recognition. At the age of 50, Mergen left the Miami Daily News but continued to create cartoons as a freelance for several more years. Throughout her career, she published more than 7000 cartoons, often highlighting topics she cared about, such as world peace, domestic problems, community well-being, and the importance of education. Mergen died at the age of 88. Her work paved the way for other female cartoonists. This post is also available in: Español Read more...
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Arts

Artemisia Gentileschi, 1593-c 1656

An Italian Baroque painter, one of the most accomplished 17th-century artists.

Artemisia Lomi Gentileschi was born in Rome, Italy, the eldest of five children and the single daughter of the Tuscan painter Orazio Gentileschi and his wife, Prudenzia. At 12, after her mother died, she began to work as her father’s apprentice, learning the skills of a professional painter. Showing exemplary talents and with the support of her father, she began to create her artworks, and at 17, she completed her earliest surviving piece Susanna and the Elders. In 1611, at the age of 18, she was rapeed by her father’s colleague, painter Agostino Tassi. After he refused to marry her, a costume meant to restore her dignity, her father pressed charges against him. The main discussion of the trial was not the rape itself but her virginity; if she was not a virgin, there was no legal case. The court exiled Tassi from Rome, though it was never enforced. In the following month, Gentileschi married the Florentine artist Pierantonio Stiattesi, and the couple moved to Florence. There, she became a successful court painter at the House of Medici. She learned to read and write, attended musical and theatrical performances, and befriended many artists, writers, and thinkers, including Galileo Galilei. During this period, she began to develop her painting style. In 1615, at 23, Gentileschi contributed the painting Allegory of Inclination to the ceiling of the Casa Buonarotti, honoring the life of Michelangelo. The following year, she joined the Accademia Delle Arti del Disegno, becoming the first woman accepted to the prestigious art academy. In 1620, at 27, she separated from her husband and returned to Rome. There, she painted in her studio, had freedom and independence that was rare for women at the time and had numerous relationships with men. Due to her growing reputation as an artist, she became associated with various patrons, who commissioned her to paint in various genres, such as the Baroque style, known for its straightforward imagery, as seen in her work, Susanna and the Elders from 1622. In 1626, she moved to Venice before relocating to Naples to seek more job opportunities. Once again, she was able to adapt her style to the demand of her patrons, which at the time requested more religious themes, for example, her painting The Birth of Saint John the Baptist from 1635. During this period, she painted one of her most known self-portraits, Self Portrait as the Allegory of Painting. In 1638, at 45, she traveled to London to collaborate with her father on a series of ceiling paintings in the Great Hall in the Queen House, commissioned by King Charles I of England. In 1642, she returned to Naples, managed a successful studio, and painted until she died in her 60s. In her lifetime, she broke barriers for a woman in the male-dominated art world and managed to thrive and become a successful and respectful artist. Despite changing painting genres, she remained true to her unique voice and style, which was reflected in the subjects she chose to depict – heroic female protagonists from history, mythology, and the bible, such as Cleopatra, Bathsheba, the Penitent Magdalenes, and especially Judith. Today, she is recognized as one of the most accomplished artists of the 17th-century. This post is also available in: Español Read more...
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