摘要：NancySpero'spowerful,sometimesviolentstylerevealsanantiwarandpro-feministstancethatsheneverabandoned,fromthe1960stothe2000s.Sperodiedlastyearatage83,a…

Nancy Spero's powerful, sometimes violent style reveals an antiwar and pro-feminist stance that she never abandoned, from the 1960s to the 2000s. Spero died last year at age 83, and her new exhibition at the Pompidou Center is her first retrospective in France.

From 1959 to 1964 Spero lived in Paris with her husband, painter Leon Golub. When they returned to the United States, the Vietnam War was raging. Influenced by images of the conflict from television or newspapers, in which war machines were often represented as signs of virility, Spero started her "War Paintings" — disturbing and violent small-scale works in which women resemble bombs or helicopters and sperm is aimed like missiles. In this series she solidified her pictographic language, using body parts alongside figures that recalled Egyptian antiquity. The artist stated that all these grotesque and Surrealistic images were her response to the conflict. "It's terrifying to show the horror and brutality of war," she once said. "I couldn't do it any other way."

The year 1969 also stands out in Spero's career, as it was the beginning of her work on Antonin Artaud. With "Codex Artaud" in the 1970s, she placed segments of the unstable French author's writings, either typed or painted in gouache, into works that were reminiscent of Chinese scroll paintings or Egyptian papyri. The decade of the 70s was a period of growth and engagement for the artist, who became involved with WAR (Women Artists in Revolution) to protest against the under-representation of women artists in the art establishment. During this period she also co-founded A.I.R. (Artists in Residence), the first cooperative gallery for women in New York. As politically conscious art gained ground in the 1980s, Spero's work enjoyed increased visibility, and she had solo shows at MOCA (1988) and MoMA (1992).

In the 2000s, she began to paint long frescoes in color. "Relay" depicts women running and protesting who resemble Chinese shadow puppets or Egyptian figures. "Azur" is a series of paintings over 26 feet long that show scenes of oppression and abuse of women.

This posthumous exhibition reveals the unusual blend of intimacy and political content that Nancy Spero achieved in her work. Her art is feminist protest that sets its own artistic terms. "Considering myself as a feminist, I don't want my work to be a reaction to what male art might be or to what Art with a capital 'A' would be," Spero once said. "I just want it to be art."