Miriam Schapiro
| Miriam Schapiro | |
|---|---|
| Born | November 15, 1923 Toronto, Ontario, Canada |
| Died | June 20, 2015 (aged 91) Hampton Bays, New York, United States |
| Education | BA, University of Iowa (1945), MA, University of Iowa (1946), MFA, University of Iowa (1949) |
| Known for | Painting, Printmaking, Collage |
| Movement | Abstract Expressionism, Feminist art, Pattern and Decoration |
| Awards | College Art Association Distinguished Artist Award for Lifetime Achievement (2002) |
Miriam Schapiro (or Shapiro) (also known as Mimi) (November 15, 1923 – June 20, 2015) was a Canadian-born artist based in the United States. 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. 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 kimonos, fans, houses, and hearts were the form into which she repeatedly poured her feelings and desires, her anxieties, and hopes".
Schapiro was born in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. She was the only child of two Russian Jewish parents. Her Russian immigrant grandfather invented the first movable doll’s eye in the United States and manufactured "Teddy Bears." Her father, Theodore Schapiro, was an artist and an intellectual who was studying at the Beaux-Arts Institute of Design, in New York, when Schapiro was born. He was an industrial design artist who fostered her desire to be an artist and served as her role model and mentor. Her mother, Fannie Cohen,a homemaker and a Zionist, encouraged Schapiro to take up a career in the arts. At age six, Schapiro began drawing.
As a teenager, Schapiro attended 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 exhibited paintings and prints, which then led her to help form the Iowa Print Group.
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