Dorothy Mead

The first female president of the London Group and a feminist, Dorothy Mead built a career marked by innovation and evolution. Mead famously refused to sit through a course on perspective, thereby sacrificing her degree from the Slade School of Art. A member of the Borough Group, she made quasi-impressionistic paintings that toe the line between figuration and abstraction. Her early works—colorful landscapes made with dense, thick brushwork—evoke the style of her longtime teacher and mentor, David Bomberg. As Mead progressed, her strokes became softer, her surfaces lighter, and her subject matter more human. During her short career, which prematurely ended with her death at 46, she exhibited with such artists as David Hockney and Bridget Riley.