Eileen Cooper has been a consistently successful artist across her 50-year career, her influence seen in the range and depth of her work as well as in her contribution to art education. 

Reflecting on Cooper’s artistic experiences – which, in the words of Linsey Young ‘disrupt the neat patriarchal understandings of women’ – this thoughtfully designed and elegant hard back book brings together for the first time early works illustrated alongside previously unseen works including drawings, paintings, prints, ceramics and portraits, many of which will be a surprise to readers. 

The book also considers Cooper’s contribution in relation to works from the collections of Leicester Museum & Art Gallery that resonate with her thematically or art historically, including works by Peter Doig, Paula Rego, Pablo Picasso, Dame Laura Knight and Lotte Laserstein. Its publication coincides with Cooper’s first major survey exhibition at Leicester Museum & Art Gallery, curated by Kathleen Soriano to explore ‘the ways in which artists take their inspiration’.

978 1 3999 3150 2
Royal Academy of Arts
247 x 177 mm
144 pages
£20.00, Hardback