In her paintings, drawings, and installations, the pioneering feminist artist Ida Applebroog explores what she describes as "the subtexts of gender politics, communication breakdowns, and socio-sexual dysfunction, while always chronicling the banal." An early member of Heresies, a collective of artists and writers that published the influential journal Heresies: A Feminist Publication on Art and Politics in the 1970s and '80s, Applebroog was actively involved in the development of feminist art. Inspired by cartoons and comic books, her work uses black humor and the aesthetic of popular imagery to examine pressing social and political concerns.

Applebroog's work often features seemingly trivial scenes of domestic life and everyday routines. In her series of Window Pieces from the late '70s and '80s, the artist depicts intimate scenes obscured by a partially drawn window shade, placing the viewer in the role of peeping tom. Likewise, in her Marginalia paintings of the '90s, Applebroog depicts human and animal figures on freestanding panels, often in blood-red or brown paint, creating totemic figures representing contemporary stock types.

Applebroog has been the subject of numerous exhibitions, including solo shows at the Corcoran Gallery of Art, the Brooklyn Museum, the Irish Museum of Modern Art in Dublin, and the Whitney Museum. Her work has also been exhibited in notable group shows such as "Shifting the Gaze: Painting and Feminism" at the Jewish Museum (2010), "elles@centrepompidou" at the Centre Pompidou (2009), "The American Century: Art and Culture at the Whitney" (1999), the 1993 and 1991 Whitney Biennials, and Documenta 8 in 1987. In 1998, Applebroog was the recipient of a MacArthur Foundation Fellowship, and she has received lifetime achievement awards from the College Art Association (1995) and the Women's Caucus for Art (2008).