Nancy Spero in her Studio, 71st Street, New York 1973
Pictured in background: Codex Artaud II (top),
Codex Artaud I (bottom)
Photograph: Susan Weiley
Nancy Spero
Maypole: Take No Prisoners II 2008 (detail)
Installation view, Serpentine Gallery, London
(3 March – 2 May 2011)
© 2011 Jerry Hardman-Jones
Nancy Spero at the Serpentine Gallery Major survey of the work of American artist, feminist and activist Nancy Spero (1926 – 2009) goes on display at the Serpentine Gallery, London, 3 March – 2 May 2011]]>
Source: Serpentine Gallery / theartwolf.com
“I have come to the conclusion that the art world has to join us, women artists, not we join it. When women are in leadership roles and gain rewards and recognition, then perhaps women and men can all work together in art world actions”
Nancy Spero.
A feminist pioneer and politically active throughout her life, Spero created work that was often radical, making strong statements against war, violence, male dominance and abuses of power. Spero was born in Cleveland, but her family moved to Chicago a year later. She studied at the Art Institute of Chicago, where she met her husband and collaborator, Leon Golub. Later, she lived in New York City, where she created some of her most powerful works against the backdrop of the Civil Rights Movement and the Vietnam War.
Spero was a member of the Art Workers Coalition and the Women Artists in Revolution. She was a founding member of the first women’s cooperative gallery, A.I.R. (Artists in Residence), in SoHo, New York. Rejecting the dominant post-war movements of formalist Abstraction and Pop Art in the 1950s, Spero developed a more ephemeral and immediate way of working that used painting, collage, printmaking and installation. This practice, which Spero once termed ‘peinture féminine’, could, as she saw it, address (and redress) both the struggles of women in patriarchal society and the horrors perennially wrought by American military might.
In 2006, Spero was elected a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters. She died of heart failure in Manhattan on October 18, 2009. The exhibition at the Serpentine Gallery is the first major presentation following her death.
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