Nancy Graves

(Pittsfield, Massachusetts, 1939 - 1995, New York, New York)

American

A prolific cross-disciplinary artist, Graves developed a sustained body of sculptures, paintings, drawings, watercolors, and prints. She also produced films and innovative set designs during her 54-year lifetime. Pittsfield’s Berkshire Museum, where Nancy Stevenson Graves’s father worked, presented both art and natural history, a combination that presaged the future artist’s interests in art and science. Her family encouraged her studies, which led to undergraduate and graduate degrees in art from Yale. Graves experimented with sculpture while investigating taxidermy and antique anatomical models. Her first sculptures were realistic depictions of camels, a recurring subject in her work. Relocating to New York in 1966, Graves continued to pursue her interests in anatomy, anthropology, and archaeology. She also worked in film, drawing, painting, and printmaking. In 1969, she became the youngest artist — and only the fifth woman — to be selected for a solo presentation at the Whitney Museum of Art. In 1976 she began twenty years of experimenting in casting and coloring bronze, contributing to the revival of bronze as a favored medium for sculpture at a time when most sculptors favored industrial methods and architectural constructions. 

http://www.nancygravesfoundation.org/nancygraves.html

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