10 Artists you need to Know 👀
Discover 10 hidden gems of the art world, including Jane Fisher's, Felix Valotton, Atkinson Grimshaw & Jef Bourgeau. Your next favorite artist is here.
1 | Hiroshi Yoshida (1876–1950)
In his late 40s, already an acclaimed oil painter, Yoshida dedicated himself to woodblock printing and created 259 prints of landscapes from around the world. He printed the same scenes in different color variations to capture shifting moods and light, from the Taj Mahal at dawn to Alpine sunsets. In 1925, he opened his own workshop and supervised every detail himself, stamping his best prints with a "jizuri" seal that collectors hunt for today.
2 | Jane Fisher (b. 1961)
Fisher paints people caught mid-motion: divers suspended in air, swimmers emerging from pools, someone nervous before a rodeo. Her canvases freeze these fleeting moments with photographic precision, capturing what she calls "people in varying degrees of self-awareness." Working in the Bay Area since 1984, she turns ordinary Americans into psychological studies where you can feel the emotion hanging in the air.
3 | Félix Vallotton (1865–1925)
The Swiss outsider of the Nabis group revolutionized woodcut with stark black and white compositions that made him famous in 1890s Paris. His scandalous "Intimacies" (Intimités) series showed ten domestic scenes dripping with adultery and marital betrayal. Even Whistler praised his nocturnes, though Vallotton's paintings always kept that unsettling emotional coldness. He was known as "the foreign Nabi" and never quite fit in anywhere.
4 | Jef Bourgeau (b. 1950)
Detroit provocateur whose 1999 exhibition was padlocked by the Detroit Institute of Arts after just three days. He founded the Museum of New Art in response and kept making controversial sculptures that mix iconic imagery with irreverent materials. Police have raided his shows and he has been put on trial for obscenity. He began his journey as an undiagnosed dyslexic working in a box factory, building pinhole cameras from materials at hand.
5 | Mariya Golub (b. 1990)
This Ukrainian painter creates what she calls "magical realism" — psychedelic forest dreamscapes that vibrate with rhythmic patterns. Her canvases look almost embroidered, influenced by her passion for beadwork and textile art. Born in Cherkasy, she's also a professional singer and poet who creates works people describe as having a therapeutic, harmonizing effect on the viewer.
