Nancy Spero’s Fundraising Edition for Printed Matter is a set of bookplates featuring an image of a female figure, depicted in contour black and white lines, bending forward with two phallic forms in each hand. These bookplates (Ex Libris) are printed on acid-free paper and come in an archival document box. There are 250 plates in each box, including one that is signed and numbered. The three color bookplates are printed by Abrams Gleber Warhover Lithographers, Inc.
Nancy Spero is an artist and feminist activist who produced a radical body of work during the course of her life from 1926 until her death in 2009. Spero used archetypal imagery of women across history and cultures in order to reframe historical narratives which placed women at the center, rather than the subordinate. Nancy Spero was born in Cleveland, Ohio, and graduated from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 1949. She studied at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts in Paris. As an activist, Spero participated in the Women Artists in Revolution (WAR) and the Art Workers Coalition in the 1960s and in 1972 cofounded A.I.R. Gallery, the first independent women’s art gallery in the United States. Spero’s work has been the subject of numerous monographic museum exhibitions, including major retrospectives at the Centre Pompidou in Paris, Serpentine Gallery in London, Museum der Moderne in Salzburg, Museo d’art Contemporani de Barcelona, and the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía in Madrid.
