Miriam Schapiro (also known as Mimi) (November 15, 1923 – June 20, 2015) was a

Canadian Canadians () are people identified with the country of Canada. This connection may be residential, legal, historical or cultural. For most Canadians, many (or all) of these connections exist and are collectively the source of their being ''C ...

-born artist based in the

United States The United States of America (USA), also known as the United States (U.S.) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It is a federal republic of 50 U.S. state, states and a federal capital district, Washington, D.C. The 48 ...

. She was a painter, sculptor, printmaker, and a pioneer of

feminist art The feminist art movement refers to the efforts and accomplishments of feminists internationally to produce feminist art, art that reflects women's lives and experiences, as well as to change the foundation for the production and perception of co ...

. She was also considered a leader of the

Pattern and Decoration A pattern is a regularity in the world, in human-made design, or in abstract ideas. As such, the elements of a pattern repeat in a predictable manner. A geometric pattern is a kind of pattern formed of geometric shapes and typically repeated li ...

art movement. Schapiro's artwork blurs the line between fine art and craft. She incorporated craft elements into her paintings due to their association with women and femininity. Schapiro's work touches on the issue of feminism and art: especially in the aspect of feminism in relation to abstract art. Schapiro honed in her domesticated craft work and was able to create work that stood amongst the rest of the high art. These works represent Schapiro's identity as an artist working in the center of contemporary abstraction and simultaneously as a feminist being challenged to represent women's "consciousness" through imagery. She often used icons that are associated with women, such as hearts, floral decorations, geometric patterns, and the color pink. In the 1970s she made the hand fan, a typically small woman's object, heroic by painting it six feet by twelve feet. "The fan-shaped canvas, a powerful icon, gave Schapiro the opportunity to experiment … Out of this emerged a surface of textured coloristic complexity and opulence that formed the basis of her new personal style. The

kimono The is a traditional Japanese garment and the national dress of Japan. The kimono is a wrapped-front garment with square sleeves and a rectangular body, and is worn Garment collars in hanfu#Youren (right lapel), left side wrapped over ri ...

, fans, houses, and hearts were the form into which she repeatedly poured her feelings and desires, her anxieties, and hopes".

Early life and education

Schapiro was born in

Toronto Toronto ( , locally pronounced or ) is the List of the largest municipalities in Canada by population, most populous city in Canada. It is the capital city of the Provinces and territories of Canada, Canadian province of Ontario. With a p ...

, Ontario, Canada. She was the only child of Russian Jewish parents. Her Russian immigrant grandfather invented the first movable doll's eye in the United States and manufactured "Teddy Bears." Schapiro later included dolls in her work, as paper cutouts and as photo reproductions of images from magazines, and in her statement accompanying an exhibition of her work at the Flomenhaft Gallery, she remarked that "In our country we don't feel about dolls as Europeans, Africans or Asians do," providing an anecdote that nuns at a Japanese temple explained their reason for being there was to care for the souls of the dolls. Her father, Theodore Schapiro, was an artist and an intellectual who was studying at the

Beaux-Arts Institute of Design The Beaux-Arts Institute of Design (BAID, later the National Institute for Architectural Education) was an art and architectural school at 304 East 44th Street in Turtle Bay, Manhattan, in New York City.Gouma-Peterson, Thalia. Miriam Schapiro: An Art of Becoming. American Art 11.1 (1997) : 10-45. As a teenager, Schapiro was taught by Victor d’Amico, her first modernist teacher at the Museum of Modern Art. In the evenings she joined WPA classes for adults to study drawing from the nude model. In 1943, Schapiro entered Hunter College in New York City, but eventually transferred to the University of Iowa. At the University of Iowa, Schapiro studied painting with Stuart Edie and James Lechay. She studied printmaking under

Mauricio Lasansky Mauricio Leib Lasansky (October 12, 1914 – April 2, 2012) was an Argentine artist and educator known both for his advanced techniques in intaglio printmaking and for a series of 33 pencil drawings from the 1960s titled "The Nazi Drawings." ...

and was his personal assistant, which then led her to help form the Iowa Print Group. Lasanky taught his students to use several different printing techniques in their work and to study the masters' work in order to find solutions to technical problems. At the

State University of Iowa The University of Iowa (U of I, UIowa, or Iowa) is a public research university in Iowa City, Iowa, United States. Founded in 1847, it is the oldest and largest university in the state. The University of Iowa is organized into 12 colleges offer ...

she met the artist

Paul Brach Paul Brach (March 13, 1924 - November 16, 2007) was an American abstract painter, as well as a lecturer and educator. As an abstract painter Paul Brach exhibited his work in New York with the Leo Castelli Gallery, the Cordier & Eckstrom Gallery ...

, whom she married in 1946.Avital H. Bloch, Lauri Umansky, ''Impossible to Hold: Women and Culture in the 1960s'', NYU Press, 2005, p319. After Brach and Schapiro graduated in 1949, Brach received a job in the University of Missouri as a painting instructor. Schapiro did not receive a position, and was very unhappy during their time there. By 1951 they moved to

New York City New York, often called New York City (NYC), is the most populous city in the United States, located at the southern tip of New York State on one of the world's largest natural harbors. The city comprises five boroughs, each coextensive w ...

and befriended many of the

Abstract expressionist Abstract expressionism in the United States emerged as a distinct art movement in the aftermath of World War II and gained mainstream acceptance in the 1950s, a shift from the American social realism of the 1930s influenced by the Great Depressi ...

artists of the New York School, including

Joan Mitchell Joan Mitchell (February 12, 1925 – October 30, 1992) was an American artist who worked primarily in painting and printmaking, and also used pastel and made other works on paper. She was an active participant in the New York School of artis ...

Larry Rivers Larry Rivers (born Yitzroch Loiza Grossberg; August 17, 1923 – August 14, 2002) was an American painter, musician, filmmaker, and occasional actor. Considered by many scholars to be the "Godfather" and "Grandfather" of Pop art, he was on ...

Knox Martin Knox Martin (February 12, 1923 – May 15, 2022) was an American painter, sculptor, and muralist. Born in Barranquilla, Colombia, he studied at the Art Students League of New York from 1946 until 1950. He was one of the leading members of the N ...

and Michael Goldberg. Schapiro and Brach lived in New York City during the 1950s and 1960s. Miriam and Paul had a son, Peter Brach, in 1955. Before and after the birth of her son Peter, Schapiro struggled with her identity and place as an artist. Miriam's Schapiro's successive studios, after this period of crisis, became both environments for and reflections of the changes in her life and art. She died on June 20, 2015, in

Hampton Bays, New York Hampton Bays is a hamlet and census-designated place (CDP) in the Town of Southampton in Suffolk County, on Long Island, in New York. It is considered as part of the region of Long Island known as The Hamptons. The population was 13,603 at the ...

, aged 91.

Career

Miriam Schapiro's art career spanned over four decades. She was involved in

Abstract expressionism Abstract expressionism in the United States emerged as a distinct art movement in the aftermath of World War II and gained mainstream acceptance in the 1950s, a shift from the American social realism of the 1930s influenced by the Great Depressi ...

Minimalism In visual arts, music, and other media, minimalism is an art movement that began in the post-war era in western art. The movement is often interpreted as a reaction to abstract expressionism and modernism; it anticipated contemporary post-mi ...

Computer art Computer art is art in which computers play a role in the production or display of the artwork. Such art can be an image, sound, animation, video, CD-ROM, DVD-ROM, video game, website, algorithm, performance or gallery installation. Many traditio ...

, and

Feminist art The feminist art movement refers to the efforts and accomplishments of feminists internationally to produce feminist art, art that reflects women's lives and experiences, as well as to change the foundation for the production and perception of co ...

. She worked with collage, printmaking, painting, – using women's craft in her artwork, and sculpture. Schapiro not only honored the craft tradition in women's art, but also paid homage to women artists of the past. In the early 1970s she made paintings and collages which included photo reproductions of past artists such as

Mary Cassatt Mary Stevenson Cassatt (; May 22, 1844June 14, 1926) was an American painter and printmaker. She was born in Allegheny, Pennsylvania (now part of Pittsburgh's North Side (Pittsburgh), North Side), but lived much of her adult life in France, whe ...

. In the mid 1980s she painted portraits of

Frida Kahlo Magdalena Carmen Frida Kahlo y Calderón (; 6 July 1907 – 13 July 1954) was a Mexican painter known for her many portraits, self-portraits, and works inspired by the nature and artifacts of Mexico. Inspired by Culture of Mexico, the country' ...

on top of her old self-portrait paintings. In the 1990s Schapiro began to include women of the Russian Avant Garde in her work. The Russian Avant Garde was an important moment in Modern Art history for Schapiro to reflect on because women were seen as equals.

New York and Abstract Expressionism

and Miriam Schapiro moved back to New York after graduate school in the early 1950s. Although Brach frequented The Club where abstract expressionist artists met to debate, talk, drink, and dance, she was never a member. In one of her journals, she wrote that women were not viewed as serious artists by members of The Club. Schapiro worked in the style of

during this time period. Between 1953 and 1957, Schapiro created a substantial body of work. Schapiro created her own gestural language: "painting thinly and wiping out", in which the wiped area played a significant role as the painted area. Although these works were abstracted such as her work ''Beast Land and Plenty'', Schapiro based them off of black and white illustrations of works by the "old masters". In December 1957,

André Emmerich André Emmerich (October 11, 1924 – September 25, 2007) was a German-born American gallerist who specialized in the color field school and pre-Columbian art while also taking on artists such as David Hockney and John D. Graham. Early life an ...

selected one of her paintings for the opening of his gallery. Beginning in 1960 Schapiro began to eliminate abstract expressionist brushwork from her paintings and in order to introduce a variety of geometric forms. Schapiro started looking for maternal symbols to unify her own roles as a woman. Her series, ''Shrines'' was created in 1961–63 with this in mind. It is one of her earliest group of work that was also an autobiography. Each section of the work show an aspect of being a woman artist. They are also symbolic of her body and soul. The play between the illusion of depth and the acceptance of the surface became the main formal strategy of Miriam's work for the rest of the decade. The Shrines enabled Schapiro to discover the multiple and fragmented aspects of herself. In 1964 Schapiro and her husband Paul both worked at the Tamarind Lithography Workshop. One of Schapiro's biggest turning points in her art career was working at the workshop and experimenting with

Josef Albers Josef Albers ( , , ; March 19, 1888March 25, 1976) was a German-born American artist and Visual arts education, educator who is considered one of the most influential 20th-century art teachers in the United States. Born in 1888 in Bottrop, Westp ...

' Color-Aid paper, where she began making several new shrines and created her first collages.

California

Computer Art

In 1967, Schapiro and Brach moved to

California California () is a U.S. state, state in the Western United States that lies on the West Coast of the United States, Pacific Coast. It borders Oregon to the north, Nevada and Arizona to the east, and shares Mexico–United States border, an ...

so that both could teach in the art department at the University of California, San Diego. There Schapiro met David Nalibof, a physicist who worked for General Dynamics. Nalibof formulated computer programs that could plot and alter Miriam Schapiro's drawings. This was how one of her most iconic works, ''Big Ox #1'' from 1968 was created. The diagonals of which represented the limbs of the "Vitruvian man," while the O depicted the center of the women, the vagina, the womb. This work is described as "a newly invented, body-based, archetypal emblem for female power and identity, realized in brilliant red-orange, silver, and 'tender shades of pink'". The O is also thought to symbolize the egg, which exists as the window into the maternal structure with outstretched limbs.

The Feminist Art Program

In 1971, Schapiro, with artist

Judy Chicago Judy Chicago (born Judith Sylvia Cohen; July 20, 1939) is an American feminist artist, art educator, and writer known for her large collaborative art installation pieces about birth and creation images, which examine the role of women in history ...

, began to develop the

Feminist Art Program The Feminist Art Program (FAP) was a college-level art program for women developed in 1970 by artist Judy Chicago and continued by artists Rita Yokoi, Miriam Schapiro, and others. The FAP began at Fresno State College, as a way to address gender in ...

at the newly established

California Institute of the Arts The California Institute of the Arts (CalArts) is a Private university, private art school in Santa Clarita, California. It was incorporated in 1961 as the first degree-granting institution of higher learning in the US created specifically for ...

in Valencia. The program set out to address problems in the arts from an institutional position and focused on the expansion of a female environment in downtown L.A. In ''

Womanhouse ''Womanhouse'' (January 30 – February 28, 1972) was a feminist art installation and performance space organized by Judy Chicago and Miriam Schapiro, co-founders of the California Institute of the Arts (CalArts) Feminist Art Program, and was the ...

'' women were able to turn the creativity invested in providing their families with supportive environments toward themselves by allowing their fantasies to take over all rooms. They wanted the creation of art to be less of a private, introspective adventure and more of a shared public process through consciousness-raising sessions, personal confessions, and technical training. "('House') became the repository of female fantasy and womanly dreams". Schapiro participated in the ''

'' exhibition in 1972. Schapiro's smaller piece within ''Womanhouse'', called "

Dollhouse A dollhouse or doll's house is a toy house made in miniature. Since the early 20th century dollhouses have primarily been the domain of children, but their collection and crafting is also a hobby for many adults. English-speakers in North Americ ...

", was constructed using various scrap pieces to create all the furniture and accessories in the house. Each room signified a particular role a woman plays in society and depicted the conflicts between them.

Feminist Art

Schapiro's work from the 1970s onwards consists primarily of

collage Collage (, from the , "to glue" or "to stick together") is a technique of art creation, primarily used in the visual arts, but in music too, by which art results from an assembly of different forms, thus creating a new whole. (Compare with pasti ...

s assembled from fabrics, which she called "femmages". In the early seventies, succeeding Schapiro's collaboration in ''Womanhouse'', she made her first fabric collages in her studio in Los Angeles, which looked much like a room in a house. From the male technological world of computers Schapiro moved into a woman's decorated house. In this home-like studio, Schapiro monumentalized her fabric cabinet and its significance for women, in a number of large femmages, including ''A Cabinet for All Seasons''. This was her poetic version of the representation of continuous changes and repetitions in all women's bodies and lives. In her definition of femmage, Schapiro wrote that the style, which simultaneously recalls quilting and Cubism, has a "woman-life context" and that it "celebrates a private or public event." As Schapiro traveled the United States giving lectures, she would ask the women she met for a souvenir. These souvenirs would be used in her collage like paintings. Schapiro also did collaborative art projects, like her series of etchings ''Anonymous was a Woman'' from 1977. She was able to produce the series with a group of nine women studio-art graduates from the University of Oregon. Each print is an impression made from an untransformed doily that was placed in soft ground on a zinc plate, then etched and printed. Her 1977-1978 essay ''Waste Not Want Not: An Inquiry into What Women Saved and Assembled – FEMMAGE'' (written with

Melissa Meyer Melissa Meyer (born May 4, 1946) is an American painter. The ''Wall Street Journal'' has referred to her as a "lighthearted Abstract Expressionist". Life and work Meyer received a fellowship at the American Academy in Rome in 1980, two National En ...

) describes femmage as the activities of collage, assemblage,

découpage ''Decoupage'' or ''découpage'' (; ) is the art of decorating an object by gluing colored paper cutouts onto it in combination with special paint effects, gold leaf, and other decorative elements. Commonly, an object like a small box or an ...

and

photomontage Photomontage is the process and the result of making a composite photograph by cutting, gluing, rearranging and overlapping two or more photographs into a new image. Sometimes the resulting composite image is photographed so that the final imag ...

practised by women using "traditional women's techniques – sewing, piercing, hooking, cutting, appliquéing, cooking and the like …" After 1975, Schapiro returned to New York and with what she made after selling some paintings, she not only had a room but a studio of her own. Decoration and "collaboration," are central to her artwork and both play a significant role in her house as well as in her studio. The studio became Schapiro's own room and at moments of great personal conflict, the only connection with her creative self. Her various studios throughout the span of her career have reflected the changes in both the outer and the inner realities of her life. They have expressed her changing self-conceptions in accordance with or in against society, which keeps gender roles separate. Schapiro's studios have also become metaphors for her creative work, as well as spaces in which she could live her life and fulfill her dreams as well. Her image is included in the iconic 1972 poster Some Living American Women Artists by

Mary Beth Edelson Mary Elizabeth Edelson (; February 6, 1933 – April 20, 2021) was an American artist and pioneer of the feminist art movement in the United States, feminist art movement, deemed one of the notable "first-generation feminist artists". Edelson ...

Collaborations and Identity

In the process of taking on different projects, Schapiro's studio expanded and eventually became portable, following her as she traveled from place to place. It was during the same time of her Oregon collaborative project with the nine women that Schapiro also created her first "Collaboration Series" with women artists of the past. This series combined reproductions of the work of Mary Cassatt and

Berthe Morisot Berthe Marie Pauline Morisot (; 14 January 1841 – 2 March 1895) was a French painter, printmaker and a member of the circle of painters in Paris who became known as the Impressionists. In 1864, Morisot exhibited for the first time in the ...

with colorful and sensuous fabric borders in patterns inspired by quilts. In ''Mary Cassatt and Me'', Schapiro overlapped her own mental image of her mother with Cassatt's maternal ideal–her mother reading a newspaper. In the 1990s Schapiro began exploring her Jewish identity further in her painting. Her painting ''My History'' (1997) she used the same structure as the ''House'' project and built rooms of different memories surrounding her Jewish heritage. Her most explicit Jewish-themed statement in art was ''Four Matriarchs'', stained glass windows portraying the biblical heroines Sarah, Rebecca, Rachel, and Leah. This was a colorful piece combining identity symbology and her older domesticated art to create the true vision of what high art meant to the public. ''Mother Russia'' (1994), was a fan piece made by Schapiro that drew from her family's Russian background. She depicts the powerful women from Russia each on a row of the hand held fan with a hat and a veil. She added pieces from each artist work in her "collaborative" style to join them as revolutionary women and give hidden figures praise. Her background in both the Russian and Jewish culture have very much attributed to what Schapiro's collection of work represents. The foundation and collective use of patterns and colors describe Miriam's work and allow us to see her culture and female voice. She was interviewed for the 2010 film ''

!Women Art Revolution ''!Women Art Revolution'' is a 2010 documentary film directed by Lynn Hershman Leeson and distributed by Zeitgeist Films. It tracks the feminist art movement over 40 years through interviews with artists, curators, critics, and historians. Synops ...

''. Schapiro's works are held in numerous museum collections including the

Smithsonian American Art Museum The Smithsonian American Art Museum (SAAM; formerly the National Museum of American Art) is a museum in Washington, D.C., part of the Smithsonian Institution. Together with its branch museum, the Renwick Gallery, SAAM holds one of the world's lar ...

Jewish Museum (New York) The Jewish Museum is an art museum housed at 1109 Fifth Avenue, in the Felix M. Warburg House, along the Museum Mile on the Upper East Side of Manhattan, New York City. The museum holds a collection of approximately 30,000 objects, including ...

, the

National Gallery of Art The National Gallery of Art is an art museum in Washington, D.C., United States, located on the National Mall, between 3rd and 9th Streets, at Constitution Avenue NW. Open to the public and free of charge, the museum was privately established in ...

, the

Museum of Modern Art The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) is an art museum located in Midtown Manhattan, New York City, on 53rd Street (Manhattan), 53rd Street between Fifth Avenue, Fifth and Sixth Avenues. MoMA's collection spans the late 19th century to the present, a ...

, the Pérez Art Museum Miami, in Florida, and the

Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts The Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts (PAFA) is a museum and private art school in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Founded in 1805, it is the longest continuously operating art museum and art school in the United States. The academy's museum ...

. Her awards include the Distinguished Artist Award for Lifetime Achievement from the

College Art Association The College Art Association of America (CAA) is the principal organization in the United States for professionals in the visual arts, from students to art historians to emeritus faculty. Founded in 1911, it "promotes these arts and their understan ...

and a 1987

Guggenheim Fellowship Guggenheim Fellowships are Grant (money), grants that have been awarded annually since by the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation, endowed by the late Simon Guggenheim, Simon and Olga Hirsh Guggenheim. These awards are bestowed upon indiv ...

. In 2023 her work was included in the exhibition '' Action, Gesture, Paint: Women Artists and Global Abstraction 1940-1970'' at the

Whitechapel Gallery The Whitechapel Gallery is a public art gallery in Whitechapel on the north side of Whitechapel High Street, in the London Borough of Tower Hamlets. The original building, designed by Charles Harrison Townsend, opened in 1901 as one of the fi ...

in London.

Awards and honors

*1982: Skowhegan Medal for Collage *1983: Honorary Doctorate of Fine Arts, College of Wooster, Wooster, OH *1987: Guggenheim Fellowship for Fine Arts in US and Canada *1988: Honors Award, The Women's Caucus for Art *1989: Honorary Doctor of Fine Arts, California College of Arts and Crafts, Oakland, CA *1992: Honors Award, National Association of Schools of Art and Design *1994: Honors Award, New York State NARAL *1994: Honorary Doctorate Degree, Minneapolis and Design, Minneapolis, MN *1994: Honorary Doctorate Degree, Lawrence University, Appleton, WI *2002: Lifetime Achievement Award, Women's Caucus for Art

List of major works

*(1963) ''Shrines''

Grey Art Gallery The Grey Art Museum, known until 2023 as the Grey Art Gallery, is New York University's fine art museum. As a university art museum, the Grey Art Gallery functions to collect, preserve, study, document, interpret, and exhibit the evidence of h ...

*(1968) ''Big Ox No. 1''

Brooklyn Museum The Brooklyn Museum is an art museum in the New York City borough (New York City), borough of Brooklyn. At , the museum is New York City's second largest and contains an art collection with around 500,000 objects. Located near the Prospect Heig ...

*(1972) ''

'' *(1972) ''Dollhouse'', with Sherry Brody,

*(1972) ''Lady Genji's Maze'' *(1978) ''Connection'' *(1983) ''Feathered Fan'',

Pérez Art Museum Miami Pérez Art Museum Miami (PAMM)—officially known as the Jorge M. Pérez Art Museum of Miami-Dade County—is a contemporary art museum that relocated in 2013 to the Maurice A. Ferré Park in Downtown Miami, Florida. Founded in 1984 as the Cent ...

*(1983) ''Wonderland

'' *(1990) ''Conservatory (Frida and Me)''

References

Books

*Gouma-Peterson, Thalia, and Miriam Schapiro. Miriam Schapiro: Shaping the Fragments of Art and Life. New York: Harry N. Abrams Publishers, 1999. Print. *Herskovic, Marik
''New York School Abstract Expressionists Artists Choice by Artists,''
(New York School Press, 2000.) *Schapiro, Miriam, and Thalia Gouma-Peterson. Miriam Schapiro, a retrospective, 1953 - 1980: Wooster, OH: n.p., 1980. Print. *Schapiro, Miriam, Robert A. Yassin, and Paul Brach. Miriam Schapiro: works on paper: a thirty-year retrospective. Tucson, AZ: Tucson Museum of Art, 1999. Print.

External links

{{DEFAULTSORT:Schapiro, Miriam 1923 births 2015 deaths 20th-century Canadian women artists Feminist artists Canadian modern artists Jewish Canadian artists Artists from Toronto University of Iowa alumni Canadian people of Russian-Jewish descent American people of Russian-Jewish descent American people of Canadian descent Heresies Collective members Canadian emigrants to the United States American women sculptors American women artists