Wednesday’s Woman

Every other week I have an art class; with a teacher I learn all that I might have learned had I paid attention in school 1966!

My real interest is printmaking but have become more and more interested in mixed media.  So I have a lot to learn as a result the process has been pleasantly slow and fulfilling.  Mainly because my teacher is painstaking and knowledgable.

We usually spend time discussing artists especially those who excel in multimedia.This week as we discussed my new project with the book cover ‘teacher’ showed me a book about Nancy Spero while we glanced through I thought about my blog and Wednesday’s Woman; Nancy Spero would really fit the bill!

Nancy Spero (1926-2009) born in Cleveland, Ohio and lived mostly in New York City with her husband Leon Golub. As an artist and activist  Nancy Spero’s career spanned fifty years.

She was renown for her unfailing commitment to political, social, and cultural concerns of the time. To this end she concentrated the depiction of women in all their guises; mythological. in the theatre  those in highlighted (or not) in the media, tortured women. Inspired by classical and modern sources; she made prints and collages on to friezes and tapestries around museums and galleries.  Her subject matter that range from the writings of Antonin Artaud  to the Vietnam War that seemed to reflect her life.  For some time Nancy Spero life and worked on Paris during what is best described as the cultural ferment of the 1950s and 60s.  Later she moved to New York where she set up the feminist gallery A.I.R. and to join with artists and critics such as Leon Golub, Robert Morris and Lucy Lippard in forming the Art Workers’ Coalition.  During the 1980s Nancy gained international acclaim; her heartfelt works giving recognition to feminist issues and new further critical discussion.

Nancy Spero said of her art “I’ve always sought to express a tension in form and meaning in order to achieve  veracity. 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 ‘we’ (women and men) can all work together in art world actions.”

She died of heart failure in Manhattan on October 18, 2009.