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The graphic novel is a powerful way to tell a tale—but graphic works also lend themselves well to artist biographies, with each graphic artist using his or her own style to interpret another artist’s work and life. Here are five graphic biographies of women artists that combine stunning visuals with clever narrative devices.
The Five Lives of Hilma af Klint, by Phillip Deines and Julia Voss
The 2018 Hilma af Klint show at the Guggenheim Museum in New York was the most visited exhibition in the museum’s history. Julia Voss and Philipp Deines have been obsessively studying the early 20th-century abstractionist since Deines stumbled upon one of her works in the mid 2000s, with the couple’s children learning her name before they even learned who Picasso or Matisse were. For this graphic novel based on Voss’s new biography of af Klint, illustrator Deines uses a saturated color palette and lively drawings to tell the artist’s story. On top of dispelling a few myths regarding af Klint’s life (such as the notion that none of her abstract work was ever shown in her lifetime—a false narrative), the book takes the reader on a journey through fin-de-siècle Europe, showing intellectual salons, spiritualism, and contrasting art movements across the continent. Af Klint’s visions and presumed clairvoyance dominate the narrative: Curiously, she predicted her work would find the largest accolades in a spiral-shaped temple—and, lo and behold, it wound up at the Guggenheim.
Georgia O’Keeffe, by Maria Herreros
Last year, the Thyssen-Bornemisza Museum in Madrid hosted the first retrospective in Spain of Georgia O’Keeffe’s work. As a tie-in, Spanish illustrator Maria Herreros was asked to create a graphic biography of the artist. Herreros covers the years 1915–1986 (from the time O’Keeffe was around 28 until her death), with a particular focus on the artist’s relationship with the desert. Depictions of O’Keeffe and her art take over the page, with sparse text written in cursive. Herreros’s muted color palette and attenuated line work perfectly suit her portrayal of the artist herself.
Kusama: The Graphic Novel, by Elisa Macellari
Every time one of Japanese artist Yayoi Kusama’s immersive “Infinity Rooms” opens, good luck securing tickets: These trippy mirrored environments are the pinnacle of what we (alas) think of as social media–friendly art—hardly what you would deem the work of a provocateur. But through Elisa Macellari’s graphic biography of Kusama, which focuses on the late 1950s and 60s, when Kusama lived in New York, we get to understand why her early works were so radical: For example, she started making smooth spheres, which became a trademark of her work, to sell for pennies at the Venice Biennale, a jape at the commodification of art. Other provocations included having her models pose as naked sculptures in the Museum of Modern Art sculpture garden and staging the “first homosexual wedding,” in a downtown loft dubbed the Church of Self-Obliteration. Like Herrero, Macellari remains faithful to her own very distinct style and color palette of faded reds, teal, and gray.
Frida Kahlo: The Story of Her Life, by Vanna Vinci
Vanna Vinci is one of Italy’s most acclaimed graphic artists and cartoonists, specializing in biographies of extraordinary women, among them Maria Callas, Tamara de Lempicka, and the Marquise Luisa Casati, a patron of the arts, and this one of Frida Kahlo. In Vinci’s graphic retelling of Kahlo’s life, we see the Mexican artist engaged in a dialogue with Death, decked in Santa Muerte regalia, as the two retrace her history. When Kahlo relates the story of the accident that maimed her, she asks Death to recite the list of her injuries, and as Death rattles them off, we see her wounded body parts hanging on a thread, like laundry left to dry. Particular attention is devoted to the artist’s traditional Tehuana dresses and accessories, which Vinci presents as a declaration, but also as a screen. The dialogue between Frida and Death proves to be a clever visual device, as they meander through the places that defined her as if they were actors standing in front of a stage set, and the author does not shield us from Frida’s flaws, fully exposing and celebrating her humanity.
I Know What I Am: The Life and Time of Artemisia Gentileschi, by Gina Siciliano
This stunning graphic biography of Italian Baroque painter Artemisia Gentileschi is rendered entirely in black ballpoint pen. Author Gina Siciliano balances historical fact with what is known of Gentileschi, who was known for her depictions of women from myths and the Bible and has lately become something of a feminist icon. To help the reader make sense of the world Gentileschi lived in, Siciliano starts with a lengthy introduction to the realities of the late-16th and 17th centuries in Europe: Forget the idealized world of Botticelli and instead observe Caravaggio’s violence, the Counter-Reformation’s rigorous agenda for the arts, the exploration of new lands, and the scientific discoveries making people question their long-held beliefs. The book is divided into three parts (or acts): Gentileschi’s early life; her rape and the ensuing trial of her rapist; and the rest of her life, covering 50 years. This will be a delight for art history aficionados: Following the narration are 40 pages of bibliographical and historical annotations.