Cover for Nancy Grossman: Tough Life Diary
The Frances Young Tang Teaching Museum and Art Gallery at Skidmore College
Nancy Grossman: Tough Life Diary
Nancy Grossman’s work continually returns to the human body and the charged relationships that make up our world.
Edited by Ian Berry, with essays by Nayland Blake, David J. Getsy, Robert C. Morgan, Carrie Moyer, and Elizabeth Streb
Designed by Barbara Glauber, Heavy Meta

2013 AAM Museum Publications Design Competition Honorable Mention

Published 2013 | ISBN: 9783791352329

She began as a painter in the late 1950s, working in a style that combined the energy of Abstract Expressionism with figuration. In the mid-1960s, she began incorporating found leather and metal parts into chaotic and explosive wall reliefs. Coming of age in the 1960s, Grossman was painfully aware of the condescending environment in which she and many women artists worked. Soon she began carving lifelike human heads and covering them with black leather—a body of work she continued to create until the early 1990s. Frequently described as disturbing, these images “blew conventional images of femininity to smithereens,” as critic Holland Cotter noted. Alongside her three-dimensional art, Grossman has consistently produced masterful drawings and revealing collages that give presence to emotional and physical struggle. This retrospective volume surveys all aspects of her independent and inspiring career.