Oil on canvas with gold and silver leaf with anodized aluminium attachment
Nancy Graves Villain of Situation, 1989 Oil on canvas with gold and silver leaf with anodized aluminium attachment 49 x 49 x 21 inches 124.5 x 124.5 x 53.3 cm A prolific and versatile artist, Nancy Graves was a Fullbright Scholar recipient who focused her work on the cultural, astrological, botanical and biological phenomena of the places she traveled. Receiving her bachelor’s and master’s degrees at Yale University, Graves and her classmates, which included Brice Marden, Robert Mangold, Richard Serra, and Chuck Close, set out to change the landscape of 20th century art. As the first woman to receive a solo retrospective at the Whitney, Graves’ artistic sagacity allows her work relevancy today, despite her premature death. In the 1980’s, Graves traveled to India, Nepal, Kashmir, China, Egypt, Peru and Europe where she further developed her already extensive iconography of the sciences. Constantly challenging her artistic practice, Graves’ refused to make work that was self-referential and experimented with the interpretation of form and tested the limitations of color. She fused various metals together, painted on them, incorporated sculpture into her paintings, and consistently overlapped iconography in her works.
