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Miriam Schapiro

 
Miriam Schapiro

American 20th-21st century painter, sculptor, and printmaker
(Toronto, Ontario, Canada, November 15, 1923 – June 20, 2015, Hampton Bays, NY)

From Getty ULAN: Co-founded the Feminist Art Program at the California Institute of the Arts with American painter and sculptor Judy Chicago (b. 1939). Spouse of American painter Paul Brach (1924-2007). One of first artists to use computer to aid design, beginning in 1967. From Natl Museum of Women in the Arts profile: "Her defining breakthrough came in 1972 when she, Judy Chicago, and 21 of their students from the Feminist Art Program at the California Institute of the Arts created the installation Womanhouse. Contained in an abandoned mansion, Womanhouse used icons of domestic work to explore the processes and history of gender construction, linking women’s cultural heritage with progressive feminist expression. In subsequent years, Schapiro developed this link into a visual language that sought to recover and elevate the work of women artisans of the past, employing decorative conventions found in quilting, embroidery, and appliqué. To describe her artworks, as well as the activities they reference, she used the term “femmage,” a word she invented to suggest a continuity between high art collage and works created by anonymous women. Since the 1990s, Schapiro’s works incorporated figurative elements; the femininity alluded to in her abstract works became personified and emerged from within “femmaged” patterns as exuberant, dancing women."

1 objects

Children of Paradise

1983-1984
lithograph and collage on paper
Museum Purchase, Lloyd O. and Marjorie Strong Coulter Fund
2017.38