Remembering Ida Applebroog

One of the most unflinching and idiosyncratic artists of her generation, Ida Applebroog (1929-2023), made work that plumbed the mechanisms of power—who had it, who didn’t, the countless ways in which the former used it against the latter.

A first-generation feminist pioneer, Applebroog once said: “I don’t see my work as particularly tough. But we live in a world that’s tough, and this is what happens. It just comes out of my head.” As Francine Prose observed, she managed to make such work in a way that was “fiercely, even ferociously, moral, without being moralistic.”

Beginning in 2018, Ursula magazine often spent time with Applebroog in her SoHo studio, where she had worked prolifically since the late 1970s. Here, in remembrance, we return to those visits.