Erasmus Hall High School in Brooklyn
University of Iowa
Canadian-born American artist Miriam (Mimi) Schapiro was an only child born to Jewish parents of Russian descent; Theodore Schapiro, an artist and industrial designer, and Fannie Cohen, a homemaker. Her grandfather, who emigrated from Russia, was responsible for inventing the first movable eye for dolls and made his living making teddy bears. Moving to Brooklyn, New York as a child, Schapiro's early interest in art was nurtured by her family.
After informally studying drawing with her father, she participated in art classes at the Museum of Modern Art and live model drawing courses offered by the Federal Art Project. She also frequented the studio of her friend's brother, the Surrealist artist Federico Castellon. After a brief period of art study at Hunter College, she transferred to the State University of Iowa where she earned her Bachelor of Arts in 1945, Master of Arts in 1947, and Master of Fine Arts in 1949.
Schapiro returned to New York City in 1952 and quickly became part of the art scene. She lived in the same building as artists Philip Guston and Joan Mitchell, frequented the infamous artist hangout, the Cedar Bar, exhibited her work in local galleries, and taught children's art lessons. Her work at this time, like so many of the New York City-based artists, was mostly in the vein of Abstract Expressionism.
Shortly after the birth of her only child Peter in 1954, Schapiro struggled to find not only the time and space, but also the desire to paint. She had to build herself back up as an artist. In describing this process, she stated she talked to herself as if she was reborn, totally new on this earth. She repeated this litany, followed her own instructions. She began to work again. This struggle to combine her roles as wife, mother, and artist would influence her political and artistic feminism.
Newly energized, Schapiro began to consider her gender as a component of her art. Her work of the 1950s featured recurring symbols, including the tower, window, and egg, which would form the foundation for her Shrine paintings. These objects were a visual comment on the many facets of a woman's life, and Schapiro's notion of female compartmentalization and objectification. She later explained women see themselves in fragments, in parts... not only mind-body, but also parts of the body.
While creating works about the female experience, Schapiro faced the limitations of being a woman in the male-dominated art world. She remembered that when a male art historian visited her artist husband, he remarked on his discomfort at having to walk through Schapiro's studio (a repurposed dining room) to reach the living room of their apartment, forcing him to confront a woman artist at work. Despite the prevalence of misogyny, her work gained critical attention, earning her a Tamarind fellowship in 1963 and a Ford Foundation grant in 1964.
In 1967, when her husband's job led to a cross-country move, Schapiro became assistant professor at the University of California, San Diego. While there she was an early adopter of computer technology, creating geometric-themed works. One of these paintings, "OX" (1967) became an iconic example of early feminist art because of its reference to female genitalia.
A faculty job at the Art School of California Institute of the Arts begun in 1970, led to an introduction to the artist Judy Chicago. The two decided to co-teach a class and, in 1971, founded the Feminist Art Program. Talks with students and women artists led to the collaborative art piece "Womanhouse" (1972) which involved the co-opting of an abandoned house and turning it into a work of art. Related to this installation, she created her career-defining work "Dollhouse" (1972). In this supportive feminist environment, Schapiro also turned her attention to great artists of the past and made the first of what would be an important body of work, her "Collaboration Series" which paid tribute to female master artists such as Mary Cassatt.
During the 1970s Schapiro began to make collage works, incorporating traditionally domestic materials within her painted canvases. She referred to these pieces as "femmages." Along with other like-minded artists focused on using decorative motifs, many of who were active feminists, Schapiro was part of the formation of the Pattern and Decoration (P&D) movement - also known as Pattern Painting.
After returning to New York City in 1975, Schapiro's desire to advocate on behalf of women in the art world grew in parallel to her rising career (which included a prestigious 1976 grant from the National Endowment of the Arts). She was involved in the founding of the New York Feminist Art Institute in 1979 and later joined the College Art Association to fight for better representation of women artists at the university level. Her drive to include more women in the canon of art history was partly fueled by a memory from when, in a library in her twenties, when she was dismayed at her inability to "find a woman artist of the stature of Velasquez or Vermeer."
In the 1980s, Schapiro created a series focused on the woman-as-entertainer. Her interest in dance and costuming dated to her childhood and her fascination with the beautifully illustrated programs her parents would bring back from performances of a favorite Russian cabaret group. In later years, Schapiro's art became increasingly autobiographical. In "Mother Russia" (1994) she used her fan motif to pay homage to her Russian descent. She also created works that explored her Jewish heritage and her relationship with her father. Late in her life, Schapiro suffered from a dementia-related illness. After a long health battle, she died at the age of ninety-one.
Schapiro has received many honors and awards, including The National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship, the Ford Foundation Grant, the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation Fellowship, Skowhegan Medal for Collage and the Rockefeller Foundation Grant for Artist’s Residency at the Bellagio Study and Conference Center in Italy.
Miriam has also been honored by the National Association of Schools of Art and the National Women’s Caucus for Art. She was awarded a Lifetime Achievement Award from the College Art Association and also received the Harrison-Hooks Artist Lifetime Achievement Award from the Polk Museum of Art, Lakeland Florida, as well as the Elan Award from the Women’s Studio Center in New York.
Miriam was one of the earliest artists to work with computers, geometric abstractions, figure drawing, and various other styles. Schapiro is acknowledged as a feminist visionary and she definitely leaves an artistic legacy that will occupy a considerable place in 20th-century history.
Mary Cassatt and Me
The Golden Robe
The House
Conservatory (Frida and Me)
Blue Angel
Presentation
The Poet
Lover's Labor
Arts and Crafts
Window on Montana
Pandora
Untitled (portfolio cover)
Popova
Explode
Asian Rendezvous
Facade
The Punch and Judy Show - Frida and Diego
Alexandra Exter (My Fan is Half a Circle)
Aleksandra Ekster, costume designs for a 1917 production of Salome
Wonderland
Gates of Paradise
Cabinet for all seasons
Heartfelt
Pas de Deux
Acrobat
She Flies Through the Air With the Greatest of Ease
Punch and Judy Our Demons
Curtain Call II
Moving Away
Fanfare
Pagoda
Autobiography
The First Theater
Down to Earth
Treasury
I'm Dancin' as Fast as I Can
Ragtime
Collaborations Series - Delacroix and Me
Homage to Goncharova
Our Stenciled Heart
Freya-Miriam
Golden Pinwheel
Royal Presence
Agony in the Garden
Pleasure Dome
Sonia Delaunay
Dollhouse
Goncharova
New Harmony B
We Live in Her Dreams
The Twinning of Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden
The Stronger Vessel
Father and Daughter
Shrine. Homage to Cézanne
Stepanova and Me, after Gulliver
Costume for Mother Earth
Byzantium
Baby Block Bouquet
Shrine (for R.K.) II, 1963
Master of Ceremonies
St. Marks (16 Frames)
The Garden of Eden
Época (Paul Gaugin and Me)
Shrine for the Egg
Russian Matrix
Incognito
Presentation 3
Connection
Heartland
Yard Sale
In her "femmage" and assemblages, Schapiro incorporated elements of craft and "low" art, such as sewing, that had been excluded from the realm of "fine art" and merely described as "woman's work." By combining these materials and processes with visual elements taken from canonical art and Old Masters, she sought to elevate these female traditions and place them alongside oil painting and classical drawing as equals.
Schapiro embraced the decorative as a positive quality, fighting against artistic snobbery that had long dismissed decoration as a trivial sign of inferior art or craft, often with associations of femininity. Incorporating brilliant colors, geometric patterns, and tactile materials into her compositions, she created works that were unapologetically ornate, but also grounded them with allusions to traditional fine art to form hybrids whose artistic pedigree could not be marginalized.
She was one of the founding members of the Iowa Print Group. In 1974 Schapiro and Robert Zakanitch formed the Pattern and Decoration group of New York City artists.
Miriam was a feminist.
Quotes from others about the person
Through her work and her teaching she influenced the work and changed the lives of women artists all over the world who heard her lecture and saw her work.
While at school Miriam (Mimi) Schapiro met art student Paul Brach whom she married in 1946. Her only child Peter was born in 1954.
