Description
MIRIAM SCHAPIRO SCREEN PRINT, COLLAGE HANDKERCHIEF: Miriam Schapiro (American, b. 1923 - d. 2015), title, "Una Furtivo Lacrima (A Stolen Tear)", screen-print in colors on rag paper. Each of the twelve handkerchiefs were from Schapiro's personal collection, they were photographed, reproduced as twelve individual silkscreens which were assembled via collage onto rag paper. Titled, signed and numbered 27 out of 40, by the artist in the margins, 43.25" x 33"w. ABOUT THE BERGHOFF-COWDEN EDITIONS COLLECTION: The Berghoff Art Gallery first opened in the 1980’s as Soho South Gallery in Safety Harbor, Florida. In 1988, Lois Berghoff and Dorothy Cowden evolved the Gallery into the Berghoff-Cowden Editions, a collaborative, screenprint workshop first located in a converted warehouse by the University of Tampa, Florida and ultimately settling in New Port Richey, Florida. The workshop specialized in publishing unique and small editions of hand-pulled screen-prints and monoprints. The environment created within this experimental workshop inspired artists to innovate conventional screen printing techniques in a creative manner never seen before or since. Their editions included hand-painting, collage, flocking, cutting and stitching, paper manipulation such as folding, layering and cutting as well as the incorporation of exotic fabrics and layered Japanese papers. The eclectic creative-processes of the workshop attracted a diverse, global group of renowned artists working in several movements including abstraction, expressionism, realism, sculpture and pattern and decoration.A partial roster of artists who create exceptional works in this space includes: Miriam “Mimi” Schapiro (Canadian, American, b. 1923 – d. 2015), Brad Davis (American, b. 1942), Frank Faulkner (American, 1946), Sam Gilliam (American, b. 1933), Roberto Juarez (American, b. 1952), George Sugarman (American, b. 1912 – d. 1999) and Robert Rahway Zakanitch (American, b. 1935). The workshop also invited Italian artists Marilu Eustachio (Italian, b. 1934), Oliviero Rainaldi (Italian, b. 1956) and Cloti Ricciardi (Italian, 20th / 21st centuries). Recognizing the importance of this collaboration, The Polk Museum of Art in Lakeland, Florida, curated and exhibited a collection of these works from the collection of Dorothy Mitchell entitled, “Expanding Expressions” this exhibit was supported by the Polk Museum of Art, Florida Division of Cultural Affairs and the Florida Arts Council and was exhibited throughout the United States at several prominent museums from 1997 until early 2000. Rare-Era is honored to offer hand-selected pieces from this magical time directly from the Berghoff Personal Collection, these choice examples of the editions have never been offered publicly!Refs. 1.) Lois & Linda Berghoff. 2.) Bennett, Lennie. “Paper as a Malleable Medium,” St. Petersburg Times. Published July 13, 2003, accessed: October 28, 2017. 3.) Bennett, Lennie. “The Leepa-Rattner Msueum of Art Reinvents its Space and its Collection,” Tampa Bay Times. Published November 12, 2011. , accessed: October 28, 2017. 4.) Schroeder, Ivy. “Expanding Expressions: Contemporary Master Prints, UM St. Louis’ Gallery 210,” Riverfront Times. Published December 15, 1999, Accessed: October 28, 2017.BIOGRAPHY: MIRIAM “MIMI” SCHAPIRO (Canadian, American, b. 1923 – d. 2015) Miriam Schapiro is known as one of the leaders of the pattern and decoration and the feminist art movement. She was born in Canada and raised in Brooklyn; while in High School, Schapiro studied at the Museum of Modern Art and the Federal Art Project the visual arts extension of the Great Depression-era Works Progress Administration. She attended college at the State University of Iowa, where she received three degrees between 1945 and 1949, a B.A., M.A. and M.F.A. She went on to teach in several locations including: State University of Iowa; Parsons School of Design, New York City; University of California, Berkeley; University of San Diego; California Institute of the Arts, Valencia; and the Tyler School of Art, Philadelphia.It was while teaching at CalArts in 1970 that Schapiro and Judy Chicago taught a co-directed a course on feminism that led to the creation of the Feminist Art Program. Part of this program involved a collaborative project called “Womanhouse” which involved several female artists who exhibited in an old house and presented works dealing with feminist issues. Schapiro exhibited a doll house, each room symbolically built to represent her own female world. This piece is now held in the Smithsonian Museum of American Art, 1997.112A-B. Author Elise LaRose comments about "Womanhouse:" "A decade of personal and political struggle with feminist issues crystallized in (Schapiro's) pioneering and collaborative involvement. Co-directing, with Judy Chicago, the Feminist Art Program at the California Institute of the Arts in Valencia, California, they started off the school year by involving their students in a project which would allow them to project all their dreams and fantasies by creating an exclusively female environment in an old house. After renovating the house, they transformed it with performance and art works that dealt with specifically feminist issues. They used this explorative process as a means of restructuring their identities as women artists in a patriarchal (art) world...""Since then, Miriam Schapiro has been giving the history of women's 'covert' art a brightly lit showcase. The once-tabooed scraps; sequins, buttons, threads, rick rack, spangles, yarn; silk, taffeta, cotton, burlap, and wool, were excavated from the musty attics and dredged from the dark closets of art history. Now, they are assembled and coordinated with emotional and creative thought into 'femmages.' Having taken embroidered upholstery out of the parlor, quilts off beds, clothing off hangers, scrapbooks out of trunks, and tapestries from beneath our feet, Schapiro re-educates us about a history of buried art, women's art." After this project, she created paintings incorporating handkerchiefs, lace and other fabrics in metaphorical statements of liberation. As the leading member of the Pattern and Decoration Movement (or P & D) of the mid '70s, Schapiro incorporated dress, costume, and decorative patterns into her art. This art movement challenged traditional Western European art by featuring decorative patterns and textiles from other cultures such as Chinese, Indian, Islamic, and Mexican. The use of textiles also served symbolically of feminine labor. Schapiro's collages, or "femmages," as she sometimes calls them, included the needlework of other, perhaps long forgotten women. Schapiro has attempted to break the barrier between art and craft by reintroducing pattern and decoration into the modernist art world."Femmage," stands for the female laborer's hand-sewn work (such as embroidery, quilting, cross-stitching, etc.) that rivals and precedes the "high-art" collage. Her work, The Poet #2, combines pattern with painting. Schapiro comments, "I felt that by making a large canvas magnificent in color, design, and proportion, filling it with fabrics and quilt blocks, I could raise a housewife's lowered consciousness." Her involvement with consciousness-raising efforts, for which she traveled nationwide encouraging women to form support groups and emerge from isolation, earned her the nickname "Mimi Appleseed." Schapiro received six honorary Doctorate degrees, Grants from the Rockefeller Foundation, a grant for artists in residency at Bellagio Study Center in Bellagio, Italy; the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation Fellowship; the Djerassi Foundation Residency in Woodside, CA; Atlantic Center for the Arts Residency - Master Class; a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship; Ford Foundation Grant at Tamarind; the Honors Award, The Woman's Caucus for Art; N.Y. State Teacher's Assn. Certificate of Recognition; N.Y. State NARAL, 25th Anniversary; a Yaddo Fellowship.Schapiro’s work is held in numerous museums which include: In New York - Brooklyn Museum of Art, Museum of Modern Art, Jewish Museum, Guild Hall Museum, Metropolitan Museum of Art; National Gallery of Art, Whitney Museum of Art; In Washington D.C. - Hirshhorn & Sculpture Garden, Smithsonian Museum of American Art, D.C.; In Florida - Orlando Museum of Art, Polk Museum of Art, Leepa-Rattner Museum of Art; Allen Memorial Art Museum on Oberlin, Ohio; Missoula Museum of Arts, Montana; Harvard University’s Fogg Museum; Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, New York; Peter Ludwig Collection, Aachen, Germany; Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sidney, AustraliaRef: Biography courtesy of:
