NANCY SPERO
2011-02-21The Serpentine Gallery presents an exhibition of the celebrated American artist Nancy Spero, the first major presentation following her death in autumn 2009.Artist and activist Nancy Spero (1926–2009) was a leading pioneer of feminist art. During her 50-year career, she created a vibrant visual language constructed from the histories and mythologies of past and present cultures.
Trained in the figurative tradition, Spero was greatly influenced not only by the enduring dialogue with her husband Leon Golub, but also by artists including Jean Dubuffet and by the objects and artefacts she discovered in ethnographic museums. Spero rejected the dominant post-war movements of formalist Abstraction and Pop Art in the 1950s, developing a more ephemeral way of working that used paper and collage, gouache and printmaking – a process she described as allowing for ‘all manner of processions, conflicts, interruptions and disruptions’.
Opposite – Artaud Painting: This Crucible of Fire…, 1969
Exhibition runs from March 3rd to May 2nd, 2011
Serpentine Gallery
Kensington Gardens
London
W2 3XA