To the Dance: eight works by Nancy Spero 1926–2009

‘The War Series is about obscenities – sex and phallic extensions of power. Phallic eagles, devouring helicopters, the obscene language of the pilots, phallic Nazi crematoriums.’

 

– Nancy Spero

In 1964 Spero, Leon Golub and their young sons returned to New York after 5 years living in Paris. At this time, Spero abandoned the ‘hypermasculinity’ of painting on canvas, working exclusively on paper and began responding to the atrocities of the Vietnam War. Crematorium Chimney is part of the ‘War Series’ which Spero worked on between 1966–70 and consisted of nearly 150 paintings in total. Here we see an example of the artist’s depictions of the Holocaust, which were integrated into the War Series, often featuring screaming heads, swastikas and helicopters – for Spero, the ultimate symbol of industrialised warfare.

‘Part of my resistance as an artist in the War Series was a decision not to work anymore on canvas. I shifted completely to work on paper. Big canvases carried the male look! The ‘establishment’! No one was paying attention. I was madder than hell about the war.’ – Nancy Spero

In 1975, Spero was inspired to transfer her drawings to zinc plates, so she could reproduce and reuse her images indefinitely. This arching figure is a version of the very first plate she made, depicting the ‘Sky Goddess’ – a hybrid of the Egyptian goddess Nut and the mythic she-wolf said to have mothered Romulus and Remus. The Sky Goddess plate was produced for the work ‘Torture of Women’, completed the following year in 1976.

By 1999 however, Spero was intentionally producing more vibrant and joyful works, moving away from the agony of the Artaud Series and the horrors of both the War Series, and the Torture of Women. Here we see the Sky Goddess centralised in the composition as a celebratory figure, collaged against a richly-inked background, clearly demonstrating Spero’s masterful skill as a colourist.

‘I combine in one work’, wrote Spero in 1985, ‘figures derived from various cultures whose extremely diverse and often disproportionate body sizes and types coexist in simultaneous time.’

The two-part work Picasso and Frederick's of Hollywood (1990) typifies Spero’s description of this method. A lingerie-clad woman from a Frederick’s of Hollywood ad, a Mexican figurine depicting a birth, and a woman’s body given a Cubist treatment by Picasso, among others, all occupy the same space. Each of these figures are deployed more than once, in colours that shift in tone from celebratory to absurd, even satirical.

'One of my main strategies', commented Spero, 'has been to construct a simultaneity of women through time – to put Artemis, for example, alongside a contemporary media image of a female Olympic athlete, and a prehistoric shadow figure dancing behind them. I think that many women are now interested in the idea of the Goddess – of a powerful, self-sustaining and autonomous being capable of moving through life as freely as a man.'

In Untitled a figure in high heels strikes a belligerent pose, with legs spread, knees bent, and arms raised, she stands in front a Sheela Na Gig, the Celtic goddess of fertility