Nancy Spero (August 24, 1926 – October 18, 2009)

“I have deliberately attempted to distance my art from the Western emphasis on the subjective portrayal of individuality by using a hand-printing and collage technique utilizing zinc plates as an artist’s tool instead of a brush or palette knife. Figures derived from various cultures co-exist in simultaneous time… The figures themselves could become hieroglyphs–extensions of a text denoting rites of passage, birth to old age, motion and gesture…Woman as activator or protagonist dancing in procession, elegiac or celebrator a continuous presence, engaged directly or glimpsed peripherally; the eye, as a moving camera, scans the re-imaging of women.”

–From an unpublished 1989 statement by the artist entitled “The Continuous Presence.”

From The Guardian: “Nancy Spero’s death means the art world loses its conscience.”