In January 1971, American art historian Linda Nochlin published an influential essay titled Why Have There Been No Great Women Artists? This essay challenged long-standing assumptions about the absence of women in the pantheon of great artists and sparked a movement that would change the course of art history. Ce Roser, a key figure in the movement, recalls that even today, many women continue to face challenges in being recognized as serious artists, despite having had successful careers. This realization led to the creation of the Women in the Arts Foundation. Now 101, Roser is making her European debut at London’s VeneKlasen gallery, a first for an American artist of her age. She appears much younger than her years and has spent over 70 years creating art in her studio overlooking the Hudson River. Roser was born in the United States to Chinese parents but says she never experienced racial discrimination. She believes that female artists today are not as frequently overlooked as in the past. Her memory remains sharp, and she continues to produce vibrant, abstract paintings in the same studio where she has worked for decades. At the time of the 1971 meeting that inspired the movement, some people thought the participants were middle-class women who were hesitant to assert themselves. However, the group grew quickly, and by the third meeting, artist Elaine de Kooning had offered her studio. The event became a demonstration, drawing more people through word of mouth. One artist’s father, a police officer, even offered to close down 53rd Street in front of the Museum of Modern Art to support the gathering. The protest was not aggressive, but it was bold and joyous, with notable artists like Joan Mitchell, Louise Bourgeois, and Pat Passlof participating. The movement gained momentum in 1973 when the New York Cultural Center offered to host a show curated by and featuring female artists. Roser was one of seven selectors who designed a system where artists nominated each other. The resulting exhibition, Women Choose Women, featured 111 artists and was widely praised as a success. At the time, Roser was in her 40s, the wife of a U.S. diplomat who had returned home because their son needed to attend school. She was a third-generation American, the granddaughter of Chinese immigrant farmers in California. Her parents met at university, and she was the second of six children. She did not feel particularly connected to Chinese culture, having grown up in a predominantly non-Asian environment. Her mother encouraged her to explore the arts, offering her five cents for every poem she memorized. Roser's journey into art began later in life. While working in the information department at the U.S. embassy, she met her husband. As a foreign service wife, she faced limitations on what she could do abroad. During a posting in Manila, a friend lent her a paint set, and after painting a picture from a photograph, she discovered that someone wanted to buy it. This experience encouraged her to pursue painting seriously. In the late 1940s, the couple were stationed in Berlin, where Roser studied at the Berlin Art Academy under the sculptor Hans Uhlmann, a Holocaust survivor. She recalls that the experience of war in postwar Germany was not as jarring as her childhood in wartime China, where her family was stranded in Shanghai for 40 days on a train. Uhlmann taught her to transform reality into abstraction and vice versa, emphasizing the importance of decisive, confident brushstrokes. Today, she continues to paint in her studio, drawing inspiration from poetry and calligraphy, producing two or three works a day, secure in the knowledge that her legacy will endure.