Nancy Graves
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Nancy Graves (December 23, 1939 – October 21, 1995) was an American sculptor, painter, printmaker, and sometime filmmaker known for her focus on natural phenomena like camels or maps of the Moon. Her works are included in many public collections, including those of the National Gallery of Art (
Washington, D.C. Washington, D.C., formally the District of Columbia and commonly known as Washington or D.C., is the capital city and federal district of the United States. The city is on the Potomac River, across from Virginia, and shares land borders with ...
), the
Brooklyn Museum of Art 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 ...
, 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 ...
, the National Gallery of Australia (
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), the
Des Moines Art Center The Des Moines Art Center is an art museum with an extensive collection of paintings, sculpture, modern art and mixed media. It was established in 1948 in Des Moines, Iowa. History The Art Center traces its roots to 1916, when the Des Moines A ...
,
Walker Art Center The Walker Art Center is a multidisciplinary contemporary art center in the Lowry Hill, Minneapolis, Lowry Hill neighborhood of Minneapolis, Minnesota, United States. The Walker is one of the most-visited modern and contemporary art museums in ...
(
Minneapolis Minneapolis is a city in Hennepin County, Minnesota, United States, and its county seat. With a population of 429,954 as of the 2020 United States census, 2020 census, it is the state's List of cities in Minnesota, most populous city. Locat ...
), and the Museum of Fine Arts (St. Petersburg, FL). When Graves was just 29, she was given a solo exhibition at the Whitney Museum of American Art. At the time she was the youngest artist, and fifth woman to achieve this honor.


Early life and studies

Graves was born in
Pittsfield, Massachusetts Pittsfield is the most populous city and the county seat of Berkshire County, Massachusetts, United States. It is the principal city of the Pittsfield, Massachusetts Metropolitan Statistical Area which encompasses all of Berkshire County. Pittsfi ...
. Her interest in art, nature, and
anthropology Anthropology is the scientific study of humanity, concerned with human behavior, human biology, cultures, society, societies, and linguistics, in both the present and past, including archaic humans. Social anthropology studies patterns of behav ...
was fostered by her father, an accountant at the Berkshire Museum. After graduating from
Vassar College Vassar College ( ) is a private liberal arts college in Poughkeepsie, New York, United States. Founded in 1861 by Matthew Vassar, it was the second degree-granting institution of higher education for women in the United States. The college be ...
in English Literature, Graves attended
Yale University Yale University is a Private university, private Ivy League research university in New Haven, Connecticut, United States. Founded in 1701, Yale is the List of Colonial Colleges, third-oldest institution of higher education in the United Stat ...
, where she received her bachelor's and master's degrees. Fellow Yale Art and Architecture alumni of the 1960s include the painters, photographers, and sculptors Brice Marden, Richard Serra,
Chuck Close Charles Thomas Close (July 5, 1940 – August 19, 2021) was an American painter, visual artist, and photographer who made massive-scale photorealism, photorealist and abstract portraits of himself and others. Close also created photo portraits ...
, Janet Fish, Gary Hudson, Rackstraw Downes, and Sylvia and Robert Mangold. Ken Johnson (March 11, 2005)
Art in Review; Nancy Graves
''
New York Times ''The New York Times'' (''NYT'') is an American daily newspaper based in New York City. ''The New York Times'' covers domestic, national, and international news, and publishes opinion pieces, investigative reports, and reviews. As one of ...
''.
After her graduation in 1964, she received a
Fulbright Scholarship The Fulbright Program, including the Fulbright–Hays Program, is one of several United States cultural exchange programs with the goal of improving intercultural relations, cultural diplomacy, and intercultural competence between the people ...
and studied painting in
Paris Paris () is the Capital city, capital and List of communes in France with over 20,000 inhabitants, largest city of France. With an estimated population of 2,048,472 residents in January 2025 in an area of more than , Paris is the List of ci ...
. Continuing her international travels, she then moved on to
Florence Florence ( ; ) is the capital city of the Italy, Italian region of Tuscany. It is also the most populated city in Tuscany, with 362,353 inhabitants, and 989,460 in Metropolitan City of Florence, its metropolitan province as of 2025. Florence ...
. During the rest of her life, she would also travel to Morocco, Germany, Canada, India, Nepal, Kashmir, Egypt, Peru, China, Australia.Cathleen McGuigan (December 6, 1987)
Forms of Fantasy
''New York Times''.
She was married to Richard Serra from 1965 to 1970.


Work

A prolific artist who worked in painting, sculpture, printmaking and film, Graves first made her presence felt on the New York art scene in the late 1960s and 70's, with life-size sculptures of camels that seemed as accurate as a natural history display. Like-minded artists included
Eva Hesse Eva Hesse (January 11, 1936 – May 29, 1970) was a German-born American sculptor known for her pioneering work in materials such as latex, fiberglass, and plastics. She is one of the artists who ushered in the postminimal art movement in the 196 ...
, Close, Bruce Nauman, Keith Sonnier, and Serra, to whom Graves was married from 1965 to 1970. Roberta Smith (October 24, 1995)
Nancy Graves, 54, Prolific Post-Minimalist Artist
''New York Times''.
Her work has strong ties to the
Alexander Calder Alexander "Sandy" Calder (; July 22, 1898 – November 11, 1976) was an American sculptor known both for his innovative mobile (sculpture), mobiles (kinetic sculptures powered by motors or air currents) that embrace chance in their aesthetic, hi ...
's stabiles and to the sculptures of David Smith, with their welded parts and found objects; she collected works by both artists. Her most famous sculpture, ''Camels'', was first displayed in the Whitney Museum of American Art. The sculpture features three separate camels, each made of many materials, among them burlap, wax, fiberglass, and animal skin. Each camel is also painted with acrylics and oil colors to appear realistic. The camels are now stored in the
National Gallery of Canada The National Gallery of Canada (), located in the capital city of Ottawa, Ontario, is Canada's National museums of Canada, national art museum. The museum's building takes up , with of space used for exhibiting art. It is one of the List of large ...
, and two later "siblings" reside in the Ludwig Forum für Internationale Kunst in
Aachen Aachen is the List of cities in North Rhine-Westphalia by population, 13th-largest city in North Rhine-Westphalia and the List of cities in Germany by population, 27th-largest city of Germany, with around 261,000 inhabitants. Aachen is locat ...
, Germany. Working in Fiberglas,
latex Latex is an emulsion (stable dispersion) of polymer microparticles in water. Latices are found in nature, but synthetic latices are common as well. In nature, latex is found as a wikt:milky, milky fluid, which is present in 10% of all floweri ...
, marble dust and other unorthodox materials, Graves later moved on to camel skeletons and bones, which she dispersed about the floor or hung from ceilings. In ''Variability of Similar Forms'' (1970), from drawings that Graves made of Pleistocene camel skeletons, she sculpted 36 individual leg bones in various positions, each nearly the height of a man, and arranged them upright in an irregular pattern on a wooden base. In the early 1970s, she made five films. Two of them, ''Goulimine, 1970'' and ''Izy Boukir,'' recorded the movement of camels in Morocco, reflecting the influence of
Eadweard Muybridge Eadweard Muybridge ( ; 9 April 1830 – 8 May 1904, born Edward James Muggeridge) was an English photographer known for his pioneering work in photographic studies of motion, and early work in motion-picture Movie projector, projection. He ...
's motion-study photography. In 1976, German art collector Peter Ludwig commissioned a wax variation of a 1969 sculpture of camel bones. Graves began showing open-form polychrome sculptures in 1980, one prime example being ''Trace,'' a very large tree whose trunk was made from ribbons of bronze with foliage of steel mesh. Also in the early 1980s, she began to produce the works for which she became most widely known: the colorfully painted, playfully disjunctive assemblages of found objects cast in bronze, including plants, mechanical parts, tools, architectural elements, food products and much more. Graves also created a distinctive body of
aerial landscape ::''(This article concerns painting and other non-photographic media. Otherwise, see aerial photography)'' Aerial landscape art includes paintings and other visual arts which depict or evoke the appearance of a landscape art, landscape from a p ...
s, mostly based on maps of the Moon and similar sources. Below is a link to an example (''VI Maskeyne Da Region of the Moon''). Author Margret Dreikausen (1985) writes extensively of Graves's aerial works as part of a broader discussion of the aerial view and its importance in modern and contemporary art. Graves also began using the lost wax technique in her later work. She would cast delicate objects in bronze. Then use them to create arrangements. Her color scheme changed over time to bright colors in the 1980s and then shifted to more "subtle" colors in the 1990s. Some of Graves's other works include: *''Goulimine'' (film, 1970) *''Izy Boukir'' (film, 1971) *''VI Maskeyne Da Region of the Moon'' (lithograph, 1972) *'' Fragment'' (painting, 1977) *''Wheelabout'' (sculpture, 1985) *''Hindsight'' (sculpture, 1986) *''Immovable Iconography'' (sculpture, 1990) *''Footscray'' (oil on canvas, paint, and sculpture) *''Metaphore & Melanomy'', (cast bronze, 1995)Walla Walla Foundry
Nancy Graves.
*''Camels, VI, VII, VIII'' (wood, steel, burlap, polyurethane, wax, oil paint, 1969) *''Fossils'' (Plaster, dust, marble dust, acrylic and steel, 1970) *''Calipers'' (Hot-rolled steel, 1970) *''Shaman'' (Latex on muslin, wax, steel, copper, aluminum wire, gauze, oil paint, marble dust, and acrylic, 1970) *''Variability and Repetition of Similar Forms II'' (Bronze and COR-TEN steel, 1979) *''Trambulate'' (Bronze and carbon steel with polyurethane paint and baked enamel, 1984) At the end of her life, Graves was incorporating handblown glass into her sculptures and experimenting with poly-optics, a glasslike material that can be cast. Graves worked and lived in
Soho SoHo, short for "South of Houston Street, Houston Street", is a neighborhood in Lower Manhattan, New York City. Since the 1970s, the neighborhood has been the location of many artists' lofts and art galleries, art installations such as The Wall ...
and in Beacon, New York, where she maintained a studio.


Exhibitions

Graves, whose first New York exhibition was at the Graham Gallery in 1968, has been represented by M. Knoedler & Company since 1980. She exhibited extensively in galleries in the United States and Europe and is represented in museums around the world. A comprehensive museum retrospective, organized by the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth, later traveled to the
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 ...
in 1987. When the restored
Rainbow Room The Rainbow Room is a private event space on the 65th floor of 30 Rockefeller Plaza at Rockefeller Center in Midtown Manhattan, New York City. Run by Tishman Speyer, it is among the highest venues in New York City. The Rainbow Room was design ...
reopened in Manhattan's
Rockefeller Center Rockefeller Center is a complex of 19 commerce, commercial buildings covering between 48th Street (Manhattan), 48th Street and 51st Street (Manhattan), 51st Street in the Midtown Manhattan neighborhood of New York City. The 14 original Art De ...
in 1987, a Graves sculpture was installed at the entrance. A solo exhibition, "Nancy Graves: Mapping" was held at Mitchell-Innes & Nash in 2019. Mitchell-Innes & Nash has represented the Estate of Nancy Graves since 2014. The exhibition was accompanied by a fully illustrated catalogue with an essay by Robert Storr.


Awards

* Skowhegan Medal for Drawing/Graphics (1980) * New York Dance and Performance Bessie Award (1986) * Honorary Degree, Skidmore College (1989) * Elected into the National Academy of Design (1992)


In others' art

Mary Beth Edelson's ''Some Living American Women Artists / Last Supper'' (1972) appropriated
Leonardo da Vinci Leonardo di ser Piero da Vinci (15 April 1452 - 2 May 1519) was an Italian polymath of the High Renaissance who was active as a painter, draughtsman, engineer, scientist, theorist, sculptor, and architect. While his fame initially rested o ...
’s ''The Last Supper'', with the heads of notable women artists collaged over the heads of Christ and his apostles.
John the Baptist John the Baptist ( – ) was a Jewish preacher active in the area of the Jordan River in the early first century AD. He is also known as Saint John the Forerunner in Eastern Orthodoxy and Oriental Orthodoxy, John the Immerser in some Baptist ...
's head was replaced with Nancy Graves, and Christ's with Georgia O'Keeffe. This image, addressing the role of religious and art historical iconography in the subordination of women, became "one of the most iconic images of the
feminist art movement 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 ...
."


Death

Nancy Graves made her last works in April 1995 at the Walla Walla Foundry with Saff Tech Arts in Washington state. In May, less than a month later, she was diagnosed with ovarian cancer and died the following October, aged 55.


See also

*
Aerial landscape ::''(This article concerns painting and other non-photographic media. Otherwise, see aerial photography)'' Aerial landscape art includes paintings and other visual arts which depict or evoke the appearance of a landscape art, landscape from a p ...


References


Further reading

* Dreikausen, Margret
"Aerial Perception: The Earth as Seen from Aircraft and Spacecraft and Its Influence on Contemporary Art"
(Associated University Presses: Cranbury, New Jersey;
London, England London is the Capital city, capital and List of urban areas in the United Kingdom, largest city of both England and the United Kingdom, with a population of in . London metropolitan area, Its wider metropolitan area is the largest in Wester ...
;
Mississauga, Ontario Mississauga is a Canadian city in the province of Ontario. Situated on the north-western shore of Lake Ontario in the Regional Municipality of Peel, it borders Toronto (Etobicoke) to the east, Brampton to the north, Milton to the northwest, ...
: 1985) . * Graves, Nancy Stevenson; E A Carmean; Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth.
''The Sculpture of Nancy Graves: a catalogue raisonné with essays''
( New York: Hudson Hills Press in association with the Fort Worth Art Museum: Distributed in the United States … by Rizzoli International, ©1987) ; .


External links


Nancy Graves profile
National Gallery of Art
Nancy Graves in the National Gallery of Australia's Kenneth Tyler collectionArchives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution: Oral History Interview
{{DEFAULTSORT:Graves, Nancy 1939 births 1995 deaths 20th-century American painters Sculptors from Massachusetts Deaths from ovarian cancer in New York (state) People from Pittsfield, Massachusetts Yale School of Art alumni Art Students League of New York people Vassar College alumni 20th-century American sculptors 20th-century American women artists American women printmakers 20th-century American printmakers Sculptors from New York (state) Postminimalist artists Members of the American Academy of Arts and Letters