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Leon Golub's "Gigantomachy II"Nancy Spero

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September 11, 2008

Nancy Spero cannot conceal her awe for the artwork of her husband, Leon Golub. In this film, Spero and her assistant praise Golub’s 1966 Gigantomachy II from the artist’s New York studio. The “vicious masterwork,” as Spero refers to it, relates to her own sculpture, Maypole: Take No Prisoners, a 2007 piece created for the 57th Venice Biennale.

“And here I have the victims of all this brutality,” says Spero, while gesturing to one of the dismembered heads hanging from the flagpole. “From Vietnam to Iraq,” she continues, “there’s a terrible similarity running through all of this stuff.”

More information and credits

Credits

Producer: Susan Sollins & Nick Ravich. Camera: Joel Shapiro. Sound: Roger Phenix & Merce Williams. Editor: Lizzie Donahue. Artwork courtesy: Nancy Spero. Thanks: Samm Kunce.

Closed captionsAvailable in English, German, Romanian, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Chinese, Italian

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Nancy Spero is a pioneer of feminist art. Her work since the 1960s is an unapologetic statement against the pervasive abuse of power, Western privilege, and male dominance. Executed with a raw intensity on paper and in ephemeral installations, her work often draws its imagery and subject matter from current and historical events. Spero samples from a rich range of visual sources of women as protagonists to create figures that co-exist in nonhierarchical compositions on monumental scrolls, visually reinforcing principles of equality and tolerance.

“From Vietnam to Iraq, there’s a terrible similarity running through all of this stuff.”

Nancy Spero

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