Nancy Spero's Death Leaves Hole in Feminist Art

Artist and activist Nancy Spero’s death this week brought an end to her fifty-year career and to the unique voice she brought to the creative world. Spero, 83, was renowned for continuously engaging with contemporary political, social, and cultural issues, having chronicled the Vietnam War during the 1960s and female eroticism in her oeuvres. Using a repeated cast of characters in her repertoire, Spero spearheaded the feminist art movement and continuously reinvented herself in each work with subjects from burlesque troupes of ancient dildo dancers to Superwoman. Unfortunately, Spero was cursed with arthritis in her later years, but found ways around her “victimage,” as she referred to it, with the help of assistants and technological advances, still putting on shows within the past five years.