Theresa Bernstein

Centenarian artist who chronicled 20th-century urban life through a uniquely feminist lens.

Theresa Ferber Bernstein (1890–2002), a Polish-American painter, documented societal changes across 102 active years of artistry. Her works like 'The Milliners' (1914) depicted working-class women decades before feminist art movements. Key contributions include:

• Over 3,000 paintings addressing suffrage, immigration, and labor rights
• Co-founding the Philadelphia Ten, a progressive all-female artist group
• Capturing jazz culture in 1920s Harlem

Despite being overshadowed by male contemporaries, her 2013 retrospective at Whitney Museum reignited interest in her proto-feminist urban realism.