Have you ever imagined that you lived in a different and glorious world where all the recognized masterpieces in the Western pantheon of art history were painted by women? If not, no problem: The renowned and award-winning painter and illustrator Anita Kunz has imagined it for you in her hilariously inventive and masterfully executed ANOTHER HISTORY OF ART, which Fantagraphics will publish this June.
From the Renaissance to the pop art movement, the most lauded paintings in the history of Western art have been almost entirely manmade. But in ANOTHER HISTORY OF ART, award-winning painter and illustrator Anita Kuntz filters these iconic works through the female gaze. Her alternative history celebrates an august pantheon of Old Mistresses and mothers of Modern art composed of such familiar figures as Leona da Vinci, Diega Velásquez, Paola Picasso, Henrietta Matisse, and Vincenza Van Gogh, the talented yet troubled young woman whose true genius was not recognized until long after her untimely death.
ANOTHER HISTORY OF ART is a brilliantly satirical and feminist counterfactual history of art conceived, written, and painted by one of our most accomplished contemporary artists. Conceived with delicious wit, boundless humor, and an eye for the telling aesthetic detail, Kunz’s recreations are not only stunning paintings in their own right but a sly, revisionist social commentary on the male-dominated history of Western civilization. Included on each page opposite the painting is a brief biography of each woman artist.
Anita Kunz is an acclaimed illustrator and painter whose work has graced the covers of the New Yorker, Time, Rolling Stone, The New York Times Magazine, and many other mass circulation periodicals. She was named one of the 50 most influential women in Canada by the National Post. She was the first woman and the first Canadian to have a solo show at the Library of Congress. She has been appointed Officer of the Order of Canada, the country’s highest civilian honor. She lives in Toronto.
Fantagraphics will publish the surreal and hilarious parody ANOTHER HISTORY OF ART on June 22, 2021.