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NANCY SPERO AT GALERIE LELONG
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NANCY SPERO AT GALERIE LELONG
From Victimage to Liberation: Works from the
1980s & 1990s
January 2, 2013 – February 16, 2013
Nancy Spero’s repertoire of female figures
run, dance, crawl, tumble, and strut across the page in the exhibition From Victimage to Liberation: Works
from the 1980s & 1990s. This rarely-seen selection of Spero’s collaged
narratives show women transformed from historical contexts of suffering and
subordination into protagonists in charge their own destinies. From Victimage to Liberation is the first solo presentation of
Spero’s work in New York since her death in 2009. The exhibition will open to
the public on January 2, 2013, and the opening reception will follow on January
10, 2013.A known feminist and anti-war activist, Spero decided to make women
the sole subject of her artwork from 1976 on. She continued to pay special
attention to women as victims of war, furthering the activism she began in her
critical War Series (1966-1970). Argentina (1981) and El Salvador (1986) depict women who suffered under
repressive regimes in Latin America juxtaposed with text. Argentina also includes fragments of typed
Amnesty International reports on the deplorable treatment of detention camp
prisoners. Through her imagery of the political conflicts in Argentina and El
Salvador in the 1980s, Spero recognized and brought attention to suffering that
women faced in relatively recent times. In a 1987 interview Spero stated, “I
still investigate woman as victim because woman is still the victim par excellence, but now I
stress women in charge of their lives.”
Much of Spero’s work throughout the 1980s and
1990s demonstrates an optimistic mood through a new embracement of color,
humor, and rhythm. By printing on both connected and continuous long sheets of
paper in horizontal and vertical compositions, Spero allowed her figures space
for movement and suspension. The frieze-like collages evoke filmic motion and
fragments of contemporary society, which confirms Spero as major contributor to
post-modernism. Her adoption of the zinc plate was also a major breakthrough in
her process: she was able to reproduce and reuse images, multiplying the
presence of these women and granting a single figure various associations. At
the time of her death, she had over four hundred characters in her “stock
company” and many of them are included in this exhibition. In Picasso and Fredericks of Hollywood (1990), a group of disparate
characters including an abstracted female borrowed from Picasso, a Fredericks
of Hollywood lingerie model, a figure drawing by an insane woman, and a Mexican
woman giving birth in the presence of the devil, are repeated in different
colors and opacities creating a sexually-charged narrative. The Goddess Nut II (1990) multi-panel composition
celebrates women of ancient cultures such as the Egyptian sky goddess Nut,
Egyptian musicians and acrobats, the Phrygian mother goddess Cybele, a
mythological Greek Maenad or “raving one”, a princess’s skeleton, and the
“running women” who regularly appear in her work.
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NICARAGUA 1986
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SOUTH AFRICA 1981
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THE INJECTION II 1997
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ARGENTINA 1981
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AARGENTINA 1981
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THOU SHALT NOT KILL 1987
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NANCY SPERO
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Nancy Spero’s (1926–2009) groundbreaking career spanned more than fifty years. Spero’s best known works include her politically-charged War Series and Artaud Paintings of the late 1960s and early 1970s, and her extensive scroll works such as the Codex Artaud (1971-1972) and Notes in Time on Women (1979). Her installation Maypole/Take No Prisoners was presented at the Venice Biennale in 2007, and her last monumental scroll work Cri du Coeur was shown at the 2010 Bienal of Sao Paolo. She was also featured in the Gwangju Biennale (2000), Whitney Biennial (1993), and Documenta X (1997). Major monographic exhibitions of Spero’s work have been shown at the Museo d’Art Contemporani de Barcelona; Centro Galego de Arte Contemporanea, Santiago de Compostela, Spain; de Appel Arts Centre, Amsterdam; Institute of Contemporary Art, London; Kunsthalle zu Kiel, Germany; and Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago. Spero’s most recent retrospective was organized in 2010 by the Centre Georges Pompidou in Paris, and traveled to the Serpentine Gallery in London in March 2011. Kunst Sammlung Nordrhein Westfalen in Dusseldorf, Germany presented her War Series in January 2012. An illustrated catalogue, with an essay by New York Times and ARTnews contributor Hilarie M. Sheets, is published to accompany From Victimage to Liberation and is available for sale at Galerie Lelong.
