Miriam Schapiro
Miriam Schapiro
Miriam Schapirowas a Canadian-born artist based in America. She was a painter, sculptor, printmaker, and a pioneer of feminist art. She was also considered a leader of the Pattern and Decoration 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. She often used icons that are associated with women, such as hearts, floral decorations, geometric patterns, and the color pink. In the...
NationalityCanadian
ProfessionArtist
Date of Birth15 November 1923
CountryCanada
We really didn't have any literature telling us it was a good thing to be a woman artist. When I was trained, there were no precedents, and that was something to get really angry about.
I question the negative connotations of fabric, of ribbon, of lace. I turn these symbols of our imprisonment around.
Women have always collected things and saved and recycled them because leftovers yielded nourishment in new forms. The decorative functional objects women made often spoke in a secret language, bore a covert imagery. When we read these images in needlework, in paintings, in quilts, rugs and scrapbooks, we sometimes find a cry for help, sometimes an allusion to a secret political alignment, sometimes a moving symbol about the relationships between men and women.
When I look back on the years of excessive self-doubt, I wonder how I was able to make my paintings. In part, I managed to paint because I had a desire, as strong as the desire for food and sex, to push through, to make an image that signified.