Pioneering female pop artist Marjorie Strider passed away last Wednesday at her home in Saugerties, New York. Strider, born in Guthrie, Oklahoma, was 81 years old.

Throughout her 50-year career, Strider relished transgressing convention.  Her work could be, at once, acutely minimalist, recognizably “Pop”, slyly erotic and completely authoritative. This was a woman who knew who she was and what she wanted to say. 

It was not always been easy for female artists of Strider’s generation—the Silent Generation--to find their voice and speak with authority.  Pop Art has generally been considered a male-only playground. How could a woman have anything to say about art that is inspired by girlie magazines and comic books? Indeed, only one of 202 works at a 1991 high profile retrospective of Pop Art at the Royal Academy of Art in London was by a female artist.

Only now are women’s contributions to Pop Art being reexamined. And the tide is turning. Seductive Subversions, the first-ever exhibition of female Pop artists, toured the US in 2010-2011. Marjorie Strider is one of the most important of those female artists whose work is being rediscovered.

Strider had her first show in 1964, at the Pace Gallery, called The First International Girlie Show.  She showed along with then-emerging male pop artists Mel Ramos, Andy Warhol, Roy Lichtenstein and Tom Wesselman.  She would go on to have numerous one-woman shows.  Her work is held in numerous museum collections and she is the subject of considerable literature.

Her most recent exhibition, of new works, was at Lawrence Fine Art, East Hampton this past summer. Called Marjorie Strider:  Second International Girlie Show, the exhibition marked the 50th anniversary of her first exhibition at Pace Gallery.