Künstlerin

Künstlerin is the feminine form of the German noun Künstler, used to denote a woman who practices art professionally or artistically. The scope includes painters and sculptors, musicians, writers, filmmakers, dancers, designers, and performers, among others. Like many German occupation terms, Künstlerin signals gender, and its use is common in biographies, reviews, and art criticism when the subject is female.

In contexts that refer to people of all genders, writers often use inclusive formulations such as Künstlerinnen und Künstler or Kunstschaffende to avoid gender specification. In plural, the feminine form is Künstlerinnen; the masculine plural is Künstler; the mixed or generic plural can be written as Künstlerinnen und Künstler.

Some style guides and institutions advocate neutral forms or inclusive spellings, for example Kunstschaffende or the construction with a gender star (Künstler*innen) or the use of slash forms (Künstler/Künstlerin). The term itself does not imply a particular style, genre, or level of achievement; it simply identifies a person as an artist who is female.

Historically, women artists have contributed across many periods, but their work has often faced underrepresentation in certain contexts. The explicit feminine form Künstlerin helps foreground female authorship in discussions of art history and contemporary practice.