Great women who through the visual arts have fought for the rights of all women.

Through time, various causes have been denounced through the street-fashion and art. Here we bring you five women who with their artwork have contributed to the defense of their rights.

When you hear about Latin American Feminist Women Painters probably the first one you think of is Frida Kahlo, however, there are more women who also have made art with a strong message to the world. In the framework of international women's day is a perfect date to discover more about them.

Let’s discover 5 of these Latin American Women Painters. 

María Izquierdo

Blaisten, Renata.María Izquierdo en la Colección Andrés Blaisten, México: Universidad de Guadalajara, MUSA, 2018, pag. 21

María Cenobia Izquierdo Gutiérrez (San Juan de los Lagos, Jalisco, October 30, 1902-Mexico City, December 2, 1955) was a Mexican painter, one of the first women to exhibit her works outside of Mexico, in 1930. His first exhibition took place at the Art Center Gallery in New York City. Although most of his biographers accept the year of his birth as 1902, some others affirm that it was in 1906. His work is characterized by the use of intense colors and themes that include self-portraits, landscapes, nature, scenes from the circus world and Mexican traditions, represented in a surrealist and expressionist style.

She is considered a feminist since her works show women as leading figure. Izquierdo made multiple maternity, portraits, and in the forties, she represents nude women, kneeling and tied to columns in metaphysical and timeless spaces, surrounded by moons and stars. These women show painful and desperate gestures. These paintings are influenced by the painting of Antonin Artaud and coincide with the moment of breaking up with her love relationship with Rufino Tamayo. The representation of women in Izquierdo's work contrasts sharply with that of other painters of the time who represented women in a maternal and chauvinistic way.

Alegoría de la libertad, 1937

Acuarela /papel

21 x 26.5 cm

Alacena, 1947

Oleo / tela

102 x 85 cm

Mi tía, un amiguito y yo, 1942

Oleo / tela

138 x 8

Carmen Mondragón

María del Carmen Mondragón Valseca, also known as Nahui Olin, (Veracruz, Mexico, July 8, 1893 - January 23, 1978) was a Mexican painter and poet who was born in Veracruz, daughter of the military Manuel Mondragón, in the bosom of a wealthy family of the Porfiriato, at the end of the 19th century. Rubí de María Gómez points out that she could have approached feminist ideas and the influence of the ideology of Mary Wollstonecraft is even mentioned. The philosopher María Cecilia Rosales even points out that the fact that she represented herself in her painting corresponds with her knowledge of Mexican and Anglo-Saxon feminism that prompted her to explore her creativity.

His pictorial work is part of the naïf, which is distinguished by spontaneity and ingenuity. In addition to making multiple self-portraits, with her characteristic green eyes, Carmen Mondragón recreated typical images of Mexico, such as its parks, its markets or the pulquerías. Other of her works are characterized by their eroticism and their exploration of sexuality.

She participated in a collective exhibition at Bellas Artes in 1945, along with painters such as Pablo O'Higgins and José Clemente Orozco. However, she gradually disappeared from the art scene.

In 1993, on the occasion of the centenary of her birth, the exhibition Nahui Olin, a woman of modern times was organized at the Diego Rivera Museum-Study in Mexico City. Her next individual exhibition was exhibited from June to September 2018 at the National Museum of Art (Munal) in Mexico City, which was entitled "Nahui Olin. The infinite gaze", where painting, photography, caricatures and publications by the artist were shown.

The infinite look / La mirada Infinita

Leonora Carrington

Leonora Carrington (Lancashire, England, April 6, 1917-Mexico City, May 25, 20111) was an English surrealist painter and writer who nationalized Mexican.

Although Leonora Carrington was not Mexican, but her love for Mexico was immense and well reciprocated. The surrealist painter and writer came to live in Mexico in 1942, she became a Mexican national and made this country her home.

In 1936 he entered the Ozenfant Academy of Art, in the city of London. The following year she met the one who indirectly introduced her to the surrealist movement: the German painter Max Ernst, whom she met again on a trip to Paris and with whom she soon became romantically involved. During his stay in that city he came into contact with the surrealist movement and lived with notable figures of the movement such as Joan Miró and André Breton, as well as with other painters who gathered around the table of the Café Les Deux Magots, such as the painter Pablo Picasso and Salvador Dali.

Allergic to the media and journalists, after months of preparation, the journalist Silvia Cherem managed to "sneak" into her house with the commitment not to do a "formal" interview. His statement in this regard was: "I have never liked to undress as if I were a Playboy star, much less at 86 years old!" woman: "Although I liked the ideas of the surrealists, André Bretón and the men in the group were very macho. They only wanted us like crazy and sensual muses to amuse them, to serve them."

Iurhi Peña

​Iurhi Peña Mexico City, 1989. Iurhi Peña (CDMX, 1989) has a degree in Visual Arts from the Faculty of Arts and Design at UNAM.

The world needs more women who face reality, who are sensitive, dynamic, strong and "scratchy"; just as Iurhi Peña describes the protagonists of his illustrations. This artist raises her voice through drawing, because although sometimes she does not have the necessary strength or the courage of the women she exhibits, in doing so she likes to reflect what she would like to resolve with the character of her characters to manifest everything that in real life sometimes fails to express.

Click here to go to her Instagram

Ana Juan, Illustrator.

Ana is not from the past and it is not strictly Latin American, rather it is Iberian, she was born In Valencia, Spain; in 1961.

In 2010, she received the National Illustration Award, awarded by the Spanish Ministry of Culture. Also, She has made many The New Yorker Magazine Covers.

Through her illustrations, Ana expresses and above all denounces the abuses suffered by women and their rights: rapes, femicides, and any other type of violence that exists against them due to gender issues.

Ana is rightly convinced that women are powerful and should remain so.

Here we leave you her Instagram so you can learn more about her work.

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