Biography
In a groundbreaking career spanning 50 years of practice, Nancy Spero made the female experience central to her art and challenged aesthetic and political conventions.
Spero’s lexicon was derived from an immersion in the history of images, notably those from Egypt, classical antiquity, pre-history, and contemporary news media. She combined, fractured, and repurposed found imagery and adopted text to comment on contemporary and historical events such as the monstrosities of the Vietnam War, the extermination of Jews in the Holocaust, and the torture of women in Chile. With raw intensity, Spero executed works on paper and installations that persist as unapologetic statements against the pervasive abuse of power, Western privilege, and male dominance.
Spero’s work is held in over numerous prominent public collections, including the Art Institute of Chicago, Illinois; MNAM – Centre Pompidou, Paris; Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía, Madrid; Museum of Modern Art, New York; National Gallery of Art, Washington D.C.; Tate Gallery, London; Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; Museum of Fine Arts Boston, Massachusetts; and Dallas Museum of Art, Texas.
Major solo exhibitions of Spero’s work have been held at renowned museums worldwide, including the Museo Rufino Tamayo (Mexico); MNAM – Centre Pompidou (France); Serpentine Galleries (England); Museo d’Art Contemporani de Barcelona, Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofia, and Centro Andaluz de Arte Contemporáneo (Spain). In 2007, Spero presented the installation “Maypole: Take No Prisoners” at the 52nd Venice Biennale.
