Celebrating International Women's Day

"BalanceForBetter" is the International women's day 2019 theme, this years initiative is aimed at gender equality, a greater awareness of discrimination and a celebration of women's achievement. IWD is celebrated every year on March 8th after women gained suffrage in Soviet Russia in 1917. The day predominately from then was celebrated by the socialist movement and communist countries until is was adopted in 1975 by the United Nations.

So for us at Graphics Direct, what better way to honor women's achievements than share a couple of the best female artists and some background behind them, highlighting what has made them so strong, bold and brave.

Kicking off with....

#1 Frida Kahlo

Kahlo is ranking amongst one of the greatest female artist of all time in the genre of self-portraiture. In Kahlos work, the main theme is representing herself and the tragedy she went through and overcome, her work symbolizes "physical and psychological wounds". Kahlos reasoning for focusing on herself while painting is due to " I paint myself because I am so often alone and I am the subject I know best". Kahlo was a Mexican artist and suffered serious injuries in a bus crash resulting in 35 operations, countless replapses and left unable to have children - But this is the reason Frida Kahlo started creating art, while in hospital Kahlo passed time by painting, this soon led to abandoning her previous career in medicine and pursue her art further.

The next female artist that is well worthy of celebrating is...

 

#2 Georgia O'Keefe

O'Keefe was an American artist, and she focused on American Modernism which peaked between the two world war and was an artistic and cultural movement. Georgia O’Keeffe became the leading figure in American Modernism by challenging the boundaries of artistic style with her paintings, which combined abstraction and representation. O’Keeffe was highly significant in influencing the gender balance in the artistic scene which relates perfectly to international womens day for 2019 which is awareness of discrimination.