Valeria Napoleone is one of the biggest collectors of female art in the contemporary art scene at the moment, but she is also an irrepressible patron. As a collector, she doesn’t just passively accumulate objects — she’s a supporter, benefactor, cheerleader, advocate, and invaluable artistic fairy godmother.
It’s no surprise that female artists are underrepresented in the art world (and underrepresented at all levels), from the smallest project spaces to the biggest institutions. But even then, many female artists get lost between being the hot young new thing and the old, prized, reassessed stages of their career. So Valeria offered to share with us her invaluable expertise and singular eye, presenting this guide to the most talented female artists you might not know about.
“These are all exceptional talents who are making necessary contributions to the language of contemporary art. They are all courageous in their work, and at different point in their careers, most of them, though, in the middle of their journey,” Valeria explains. “Many female artists are induced into a type of middle career crisis when nobody is paying attention and they struggle. They are not so young and hot, but not old enough yet to be rediscovered. Still, these great talents have been working tirelessly and with rare integrity, and have been proving themselves for over two decades. To me, they are very relevant in the discourse of today’s contemporary art world.”

Judith Hopf
“Judith is a real artist’s artist. Her work is very conceptual and not very commercial. She’s not a painter or a traditional sculptor, so she’s not really out there in the market — but she’s definitely one of the most respected artists of her generation and a real inspiration for a younger generation of artists. She was a teacher in Germany and a mentor to many younger German artists like Anne Imhof, who is representing Germany at the Venice Biennale this year. Her work is really unsettling, but beautiful and with a great sense of humor. Even though I’ve been following her for quite a while, I just bought my first piece by her: a video work that features a big egg trying to go through a door that’s too small. It’s incredibly sad and a little funny.”

Frances Stark
“She’s a goddess! She’s had a few museum shows in America recently. I’ve followed her for a few years, but then I just started collecting and became very engaged with her work. She’s hasn’t had a lot of commercial recognition again, but institutions support her and are at the core of what she does. They do the work that gets these incredible artists, who might not be represented very well by the market, into the history books. It helps that she’s a very rewarding artist to spend time with. They are serious works. They use language, literature, poetry, text, and now she’s using technology — social media and online chat rooms. It’s very relevant for younger artists too, and influential, she uses these social communication systems in a very clever and intelligent way. Not so literal. It can be very banal the way some do it, but not her.”

Ghada Amer
“Ghada is such an important artist in the history of my collection because she taught me so much about myself as a collector. She has such strength and integrity. We were young when we met and we’ve navigated the art world together. We began our journey together in the late 90s in New York. I’ve been there throughout her career and seen how she’s developed — her ups and down, through dramatic and traumatic changes. Often female artists who are in this middle career moment aren’t given justice by the commercial art market. Maybe in 20 years they will be properly recognized again? Ghada’s work has been in all the major museums. I make a point that the work that I do is to highlight these artists and to collect, support, and engage with them. For me, this is something very meaningful to do.”

Anthea Hamilton
“She was of course nominated for last year’s Turner Prize, and there is a very personal story behind the Turner Prize show for me. As part of an initiative I support with the Sculpture Centre in New York, for female artists, we funded the solo exhibition Anthea was nominated for. But I’ve known Anthea for years. She was a big fan of Gaetano Pesce, but had never dared to approach him — never even to write him a letter. But I knew Gaetano, so I picked up the phone and arranged a studio visit. She came back saying she’d found the most amazing blueprint for an architectural work called Project for Door, which had never been realized! This was it! The big ass! A work so irreverent, yet spoke to so much; to class, feminism, biology, wealth, art, and architecture. So we funded it. The centerpiece of the exhibition she was nominated for. So we had to replicate the giant ass at The Turner Prize. It’s nice for me to support these artists in these kind of ways. To see them get the respect their work deserves.”

Amelia Von Wulffen
“Another artist I discovered maybe 15 years ago who has been having a bit of a quiet moment recently, though. I loved these large collage works she was doing when I first discovered her. They were so personal and enigmatic, but dark and strange too. They deal with the past and with the history of Germany. They can be difficult to see, but they demand your attention — they want you to look at them.
A few years ago, I noticed she had started working with watercolors — painting these little animated vegetables and fruits and creatures. They were strange! I couldn’t quite work out where they were coming from. Watercolors were a new thing for her, but as I saw more and more of them, it made more and more sense.”

Margherita Manzelli
“She’s one of the first artists I started collecting, so I know her and her work very well. Yet she doesn’t produce that much, and she is quiet at the moment, so I’m craving to see some new work! We need to see this quality of work! She’s such an incredible painter. She has amazing technique; so impressive and so labor intensive. She used to just work at night, so you see that come through in the way she uses light in her work. She has a child, so she kind of had to make work like this. A big survey show is overdue for her.”

Rebecca Morris
“A painter from Los Angeles who works mainly in abstraction. What can I say? All these artists, I know personally, I respect them, and Rebecca is like all the others, someone with an incredible taste. An incredible way of using color and composition. She’s very versatile. Abstraction is very difficult, especially if you want to do something new. The scale of her work is very impressive too; she works both very small and very big. Her work is so dynamic. Such an amazing painter.”

Alisa Nizenbaum
“I met her a few years ago. She’s originally from Mexico and has been painting portraits of illegal immigrants. These portraits are of people she befriends; who trust her. She paints them in very intimate moments in their homes and she paints them time and time again, developing a relationship with them. There’s one little girl who constantly appears in the paintings. The way her work traces these marginalized lives is so beautiful. The paintings are full of references to our current political situation, but also highlight the simple beauty of the people. She captures politics on a human scale.”

Lucy Kim
“When artists I respect recommend me artists, I listen. They are my best advisors. Lucy Kim was one who a lot of people told me about. Her work navigates so many things; painting, the body, abstraction. She’s just opened a show at the Institute of Fine Arts in New York, which I’ve helped to organize as a member of their board. When I became a trustee there, I wanted to include more contemporary art in their program, open the doors to the community, and get incredible, dynamic, people in there. So we started this exhibition program in the great hall there, focusing on female artists. Lucy Kim is perfect for this. I was so proud to do it.”

Martha Friedman
“A pure sculptor and also someone we invited to work at the Institute of Fine Arts, before Lucy Kim. She is very involved with making her work in the studio, she makes it herself. But her gallery just closed, the same with Lucy Kim. These two artists don’t have galleries at the moment, which is a shame, because they are so relevant to the language of contemporary art that they need to be represented in the market.”

Andrea Bowers
“There’s a lot of activism and politics in Andrea’s work. She uses language, feminism, gender, but it takes many different forms. Her work brings so much to table. She’s brilliant. This overlap between art and activism is needed right now, this optimism that her work has, we should try to understand that art can have an impact on our lives. Art isn’t separate, it absorbs and reflects our times. The best contemporary art should reflect our contemporary life and should make us look at our lives in a different way. Andrea is very relevant and important in this respect.”

Andrea Buttner
“Her work has this sense of humor, but a purity and simplicity too in the way it addresses issues of shame and poverty. It’s especially interesting in the way it looks into the value of art today, using old craft methods of reproducing art — from woodcuts to glass paintings. Andrea works in these craft tradition and folk arts almost against modern capitalism. But it’s not so literal; it keeps its simplicity and that makes it more powerful. She has created such an intense and varied body of work across so many different mediums. She’s not pretentious, not overproduced, and her work doesn’t rely on expense or glossiness to make its point — it’s work that challenges itself and its own value. I love her work so much, I nominated her for the Max Mara Prize — which she deservedly won. And it’s great that she is nominated for the Turner Prize this year too.”

Nicole Eisenman
“I don’t need to tell you about Nicole! She’s a star! I was struggling to decide whether to include her — because she’s already so out there and so well known. I discovered her work when I started collecting, but only starting collecting her work a little later on. She’s a genius! There’s nothing more to say! Her work touches people.”
Credits
Text Felix Petty
Photography Daffyd Jones