Holzer is the conceptual artist who entered the public consciousness in the late 1970s thanks to the provocative one-liners she began anonymously posting on public spaces.

An Ohio native, Holzer drifted from Duke to the University of Chicago until she finally completed her BFA at Ohio University. With a few additional courses from RISD under her belt, she moved to Manhattan in 1976 to join the Whitney Museum's independent study program and became active with the Colab artists collective. She made a name for herself with her Truisms series in the late 70s, in which she plastered text anonymously throughout Manhattan. She's since diversified her materials, from bronze to LED lights to stone but continues to explore how text—her own, from famous authors, even from declassified army documents—intersects with visual art. Some of her most common themes include violence, oppression, sexuality, feminism, power, war and death, with an attempt to enlighten the masses with her public conceptual installations. [Image via AP]