Miriam Schapiro

Black and white photo of a woman shot from the waist up. She rests her chin in her right hand, her right elbow propped on a table next to bottles of paint. She smiles with her whole face and her grey hair is brushed back. She wears a light blouse and large cocktail ring.

Photo courtesy of the artist

1923 to 2015

Her defining breakthrough came in 1972 when she, Judy Chicago, and 21 of their students from the Feminist Art Program at the California Institute of the Arts created the installation Womanhouse.

Contained in an abandoned mansion, Womanhouse used icons of domestic work to explore the processes and history of gender construction, linking women’s cultural heritage with progressive feminist expression.

In subsequent years, Schapiro developed this link into a visual language that sought to recover and elevate the work of women artisans of the past, employing decorative conventions found in quilting, embroidery, and appliqué. To describe her artworks, as well as the activities they reference, she used the term “femmage,” a word she invented to suggest a continuity between high art collage and works created by anonymous women.

Since the 1990s, Schapiro’s works incorporated figurative elements; the femininity alluded to in her abstract works became personified and emerged from within “femmaged” patterns as exuberant, dancing women.

Artist Details

  • Name

    Miriam Schapiro
  • Birth

    Toronto, 1923
  • Death

    Hampton Bays, New York, 2015
  • Phonetic Spelling

    MIH-ree-ahm shah-PIH-roh

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