Nancy Spero has always gone against the grain. When New York and abstract expressionism dominated the art world, she lived in Paris and painted people–prostitutes, lovers, mothers and children. When the slick, faceless art of pop and held sway, she developed her own hand-printing technique to produce “political manifestos.” At a time when other artists were experimenting with acrylic on canvas, she made shockingly ephemeral works on paper.
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Spero, who graduated from the School of the Art Institute in 1949, has finally received wide recognition. For years she and her husband, painter Leon Golub, sustained each other with an artistic dialogue, because the public didn’t provide any. “We had to struggle,” she said. “It’s been a gradual process, but it didn’t really turn around until recently.”
In 1964, Spero and Golub left Paris for New York (still their home). “The Vietnam war was going on and I was very tired of doing these existential dark paintings about timeless subjects. And I started thinking about war and total destruction and about the bomb.” This preoccupation resulted in a series of works on war that marked a turning point in her career. “When I started the war series I did a private kind of personal and political self-revolution. I decided I would not paint on canvas anymore, no more oil on canvas. I would make manifestos, in a sense–these were manifestos that were not seen at the time–and I would not do anything that had a traditional or art-historical import to it.” Spero began using collage in this series, bringing together mythological, religious, and popular images to express the horror of war.
“After I finished Notes in Time,” Spero said, “I decided I didn’t want to use language anymore, that it had become overwhelming and that perhaps I didn’t have the need to express my art in that way.” Some of the few texts she does continue to use are original, but most she comes upon by chance. “I used to be an avid reader, but there’s no time now,” she said. “I have a lot of feminist books, and I look through those. Leon has found some quotes, friends have found some, or I might find them through reading newspapers.”
Art accompanying story in printed newspaper (not available in this archive): photo/Cosimo Di Leo Ricatto.
