MIRIAM SCHAPIRO (1923–2015)
Artist Miriam Schapiro passed away on Saturday. Hyperallergic has published a tribute by Mira Schor, who writes, “Her influence on many women artists’ work and her role in many women artists’ lives are both enormous.”
After first establishing herself in New York as a highly regarded abstract painter in the midst of the heavily male New York School, Schapiro continued shaping feminist art, inviting Judy Chicago and the women artists of her Fresno Feminist Art Program to CalArts, and serving as a key player in bringing about the Feminist Art Program’s legendary installation art project and performance space, Womanhouse, in 1972.
Bringing together hard-edged abstraction with materials like lace and fabric, Schapiro herself continued making work at the forefront of the Pattern and Decoration movement. Her work is in the collections of the Jewish Museum and the Smithsonian, and she was the recipient a Distinguished Artist Award for Lifetime Achievement from the College Art Association and a 1987 Guggenheim Fellowship.
