American Women Artists: from Early Indian Times to the Present
Avon Books
by Charlotte Streifer Rubinstein
Boston, MA
October 1, 1982
ISBN-10: 0380611015
ISBN-13: 978-0380611010
560 pages, 32 unnumbered pages of plates : 24 cm
The first complete story of the lives and art of hundreds of women artists who have enriched our heritage since the beginnings of American History
Excerpt, pp. 433-434
“Linda Vallejo (1951— ), of Los Angeles, studied lithography in Madrid and earned an M.A. from California State University at Long Beach. She has received grants from the California Arts Council and the National Endowment for the Humanities for her experimental prints, which combine lithography, silk screen, and monotype with stop-outs and dyes.
Vallejo started out as a surrealist, but now says: ‘All of my pieces contain archetypal, mythological, or dream world imagery. I use archetypal subject matter found in ancient cultures, combined with the modern idea of self knowledge through the interpretation of dreams.’ She works with Self-Help Graphics, a studio and gallery serving the East Los Angeles community.”
This volume is a general history of American women artists, suitable for use as a textbook, and threading the fine line between appealing to a broad readership while containing a large measure of scholarly depth. The author considers a diversified range of traditional and avant-garde styles, and many media, including fine and decorative arts, excepting only photography and architecture. Along with art, Rubinstein addresses the broader cultural context in which these artists worked, noting interactions, collaborations with other artists, to highlight the relation between women’s art and their social and cultural circumstances. Numerous quotations from both the artists themselves and their contemporaries serve to create a vivid chronicle of how these women worked, the historical influences that shaped them, and how their careers progressed. The author states in the introduction that her aim was not simply to add women to the existing art histories, but to illustrate how “Women have played an active, influential, and continuous role in the creation of every type of art in America.”
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