Illustration BY Barbara Nessim

Barbara Nessim's images begin with a line, and in their finality capture something at once elegant and wild, feminine and androgynous, precise and remarkably simple.

The iconic illustrator, raised in the Bronx, began studying at Pratt in 1956 where she majored in graphic art and illustration. In a time dominated by Abstract Expressionist machismo, Nessim created artworks of a different breed. Minimalist graphics that combine elegance and grit, featuring gender-bending, street smart superheroes who were as traditionally fashionable as they were badass. This methodology of simultaneously working inside and outside the lines characterized Nessim's artistic career, like her simultaneous postures as a commercial illustrator and countercultural fine artist.

Over the next 50 years Nessim worked with psychedelic graphics, rebellious cut-up collages and glam rock pastels. Her work has appeared on the cover of Rolling Stone, Time, Ms, New York Magazine, The Boston Globe and was combined in a retrospective at the Victoria & Albert Museum in London. Aside from being one of the first prominent female illustrators, Nessim was also one of the first tech-savvy ones. "I really was the first illustrator to work with computers," she told The Guardian. "I can't tell you how many people thought it was a fad." Via