Nancy Spero
(1926 - ) |
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Art Work
| Name: |
Nancy Spero |
| Gender: |
Female |
| Place of Birth: |
Cleveland, Ohio, USA |
| Nationality: |
American |
| Birth: |
1926 |
| Death: |
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| Website: |
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| Past Auctions: |
Click Here |
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Quick Facts
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| Fine Art Profession(s): |
Painting
Printmaking
Collage |
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Biography
Nancy Spero trained at the Art Institute of Chicago (where she met her husband, the painter Leon Golub), and in Paris at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts and the Atelier Andre Lhote. Spero's early work dealt with themes of love, sex, family and maternity in expressive paint. The Vietnam war prompted a group of works on paper which criticised the conflict as a manifestation of patriarchal power games. Finding herself marginalized as a woman whose work was both figurative and political, Spero made Codex Artaud (1970-2), which was to be a model for her later practice. On thirty-three panels, forming a horizontal scroll, collaged images and text were combined which drew upon the raging prose of the French writer Antonin Artaud.
Spero saw a parallel between Artaud's isolation and her own experience as a woman in the art world. She began to use images of femininity, from ancient goddesses to modern-day women m the media, which she re-presented. In Torture of Women {1974-6) she collaged tales of the brutal oppression of women taken from Amnesty International reports with mythological figures. Spero was involved with the WAR group (Women Artists in Revolution), organizing demonstrations such as a picket of the Whitney Museum of American Art, protesting at their inclusion of only 4 per cent of women artists at their Biennial.
Spero began to infuse her work with a gleeful subversion. Notes in Time on Women (1979) is a series of patriarchal texts overrun by female figures who dance in liberated abandon. To soar 1 (1988) is a line of women with dildos speeding along the wall, while in Let the Priests Tremble (1998) women leap and somersault around the words 'too bad if they fall apart on discovering that women aren't men'. The pleasure in Spero's art is often heightened by her use of gorgeous color, but she continues to combine the aesthetically pleasing with serious issues. In Homage to Ana Mendieta (1991) two bloody hand prints trailing down the wall express Spero's pain at the death of her artist friend. Her article 'Tracing Ana Mendieta', which appeared in Artforum in April igg2 included a quote from Mendieta's notes which could equally apply to Spero herself: Art for me has been a way to sublimate rage. In fact it has been necessary to have such a rage to free myself from confinement and the fury of confinement.' |
Samples of Work
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