Macena Barton

Macena Barton, an American painter, was born in Michigan. She attended and graduated from the Art Institute of Chicago in 1925. At the AIC she was heavily influenced by the teaching of Leon Kroll. He encouraged her to develop her own style and to use her imagination, advice that she took to heart. Marcena was a committed feminist and strove to demonstrate that women could perform equally as well as men in art.

Barton incorporated a variety of styles into her striking work including both Realism and Abstraction. Focusing from the beginning on the nude and portraiture, Barton also painted numerous still life images and later essayed straightforward cityscapes and surrealist fantasies. She is reportedly the first woman artist to paint a nude self-portrait deploying a garish realism for an unsettling effect. She is now recognized as one of the foremost surrealist painters of her generation in Chicago.

Barton earned the Peabody Award in 1927 and from 1945 to 1956 won first prizes at the Chicago Galleries Association. 

Her works are part of the collections at Illinois State Museum, Western Illinois University, the Schwartz Collection and The Bennett Collection of Women Realist Painters.

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