Woman with Two Babies

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Woman with Two Babies
Woman with Two Babies
Woman with Two Babies
TitleWoman with Two Babies
Artist (American, b. 1940)
Date1988
MediumOil, acrylic, wire, nails, collaged drawing and photo image on linen mounted on board
DimensionsUnframed: 18 3/4 × 36 × 1 1/2 in.
SignedSigned on verso: "Joan Snyder / 1987-88".
SubmissionNA diploma presentation, March 19, 2003
Credit LineNational Academy of Design, New York, Gift of Michael Mazur, 2002
Object number2003.9
Label TextJoan Snyder was one of a pioneering group of women artists who combined narrative and personal experience in an expressionistic way. Often wrongly associated with so-called Neo-expressionism of the mid-1980s, her works in both painting and collage are reliant on the process of accumulation. "Woman and Two Babies" is from a group of politically motivated mixed-media works the artist created in the late-1980s. The artist worked with collaged newspaper photographs that address the plight of children in troubled times. Most of the works that deal with this subject were created by the artist in response to a series of articles that appeared in the Christian Science Monitor concerning the children of Afghanistan, Africa, the West Bank, and Nicaragua. The collages are aesthetically aggressive and incorporate objects such as nails, wire, tree branches and other implements over a rough surface.