Rise and Repaint

Founder: Pegah Kargar & Liezel Strauss

Herstory Is Art History

Repaint and Rise, orginally incubated at the SVZ as Repaint History, addresses the underrepresentation of women artists in the art world. Can you name five women artists? Women artists continue to remain underrepresented in the art world and represent just 2% of the art market. In addition, ONLY 13.7% of the artists represented by galleries in Europe and North America are women.

Founder Pegah Kargar has always been fascinated by art and the art world. Yet it seemed quite bizarre that the only famous artists and noteworthy works are by white male artists (i.e. Picasso, da Vinci, Van Gogh…) so she started spending hours researching this topic. What she found as part of her research was shocking. Women artists have been overlooked for centuries and they continue to remain underrepresented in the art market. This revelation was so profound and upsetting that she knew she had to do something about it. So, she decided to change this narrative and launched Repaint History.

In March 2018, Pegah Kargar and Liezel Strauss launched Repaint History and Art Girl Rising respectively to address the underrepresentation of women artists in the art world.

Two ventures across the globe, unknown to one-another, with one shared goal.

After discovering each other's work, (spending hours on Zoom calls!) and realizing their shared mission, passion and vision for an inclusive art world, they joined forces to launch Rise and Repaint.

Rise and Repaint provides end-to-end pay as you go artist services such as funding, mentorship courses, gallery representation, and more to empower women artists and create an equal playing field.