{"data":{"id":"3869","type":"artist","attributes":{"id":3869,"topgoose_id":737,"tms_id":3869,"display_name":"Nancy Spero","sort_name":"Spero Nancy","display_date":"1926–2009","begin_date":"1926","end_date":"2009","biography":"\u003cp\u003eNancy Spero’s distinctive form of politically engaged art combines a wide-ranging social and cultural critique with craft-based techniques, historical references, poetic and personal text, and a loose figurative style. Trained at the Art Institute of Chicago and the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris, Spero began to produce work that was pointedly political in 1965, in the midst of the Vietnam War. By the end of the 1960s she had also become active in the Art Workers Coalition and Women Artists in Revolution, groups that protested the discriminatory practices of New York cultural institutions. Throughout the 1970s, Spero’s work increasingly reflected feminist concerns, portraying the protagonists of history with female figures, or referencing personal experience through text-based compositions.\u003c/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003ca href=\"/collection/works/29486\"\u003e\u003cem\u003eHours of the Night\u003c/em\u003e\u003c/a\u003e—comprising eleven nine-foot-high, hand-printed and collaged paper panels—is a textual work that recalls a manuscript or scroll, though it eludes linear reading. Phrases such as \u003cem\u003eshoot out\u0026nbsp;\u003c/em\u003eand \u003cem\u003ebody count\u0026nbsp;\u003c/em\u003esuggest the violence and grim political climate that followed the United States’ withdrawal from Vietnam in 1973. Textual fragments such as \u003cem\u003esmoke lick\u003c/em\u003e and \u003cem\u003eknife cut\u003c/em\u003e hint at more personal events: a fire that damaged Spero’s New York apartment the year the work was made, and a stabbing that injured her husband, the artist \u003ca href=\"/artists/4118\"\u003eLeon Golub.\u003c/a\u003e \u003cem\u003eHours of the Night\u003c/em\u003e might suggest a catalogue of night terrors or racing thoughts, but Spero described the piece in more optimistic terms. The work, she stated, was inspired by the Ancient Egyptian B\u003cem\u003eook of the Dead\u003c/em\u003e, in which\nthe sun god Ra “travels the underworld each\nnight, but emerges triumphant at dawn\neach day. This continual battle affirms the\nfuture—and the celebration of life.”\u003c/p\u003e","on_view":false,"artport":false,"biennial":true,"collection":true,"ulan_id":"500060537","wikidata_id":"Q2731236","created_at":"2017-08-30T15:49:41.000-04:00","updated_at":"2026-03-27T07:01:55.383-04:00","links":{"artworks":"/api/artists/3869/artworks","exhibitions":"/api/artists/3869/exhibitions"}}}}