Minna Citron (1896-1991) was a feminist painter and printmaker born in New Jersey in 1896. Beginning in 1924, she studied under Bejamin Kopman at the Brooklyn Institute of Arts and Sciences, at the New York School of Applied Design for Women, and at Art Students’ League, where she worked under the guidance of Kenneth Hayes Miller. Throughout the 1930s, Citron painted scenes of Union Square that combined humor with social commentary. She was particularly interested in how feminist concerns influenced her role as an artist. One of her first solo exhibitions, Femininities (1935), depicted the irony of the female beauty industry.
After teaching and painting for several years in New York City and Tennessee, Citron began studying printmaking in the 1940s. In her work, Citron used broken etching plates to create unique, abstract designs. Her work is represented in collections of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Museum of Modern Art, National Gallery of Art, Library of Congress, New York Public Library, Victoria and Albert Museum, and the Art Institute of Chicago.
