Sylvia Sleigh was a realist painter known for her role in the feminist art movement and particularly for reversing traditional gender roles by painting nude men. She utilised conventional female poses from historical paintings by male artists, and her male models were identifiable as artists or art critics she knew. She was an important part of the New York feminist art scene in the 1960s.
Sleigh spent much of the latter part of her life in the US but in 1921 she lived in Carlisle Road, Hove. Sylvia studied at the Brighton School of Art, at a time when female art students were, as she recalled, ‘treated in a second-rate fashion’. For a time, she worked at a shop in Bond Street in Brighton and went on to open her own clothing shop in the city.
Between 1953 and 2010, Sylvia Sleigh had more than 45 solo exhibitions at art galleries, and museums. Her work is included in important art collections across the world, and she won many prestigious awards.
