By the third solo exhibition at Emmerich in 1961, Schapiro was exploring the compositional format of a single vertical band through the center of the canvas, in which she incorporated shapes and symbols that were associated with the feminine. They included primary forms like a rectangle—which became an aperture or window, and also would develop into what she termed the “central core,” associated with a woman’s body. Along with more geometric forms, she also utilized bodily suggestive painterly gestures. Of one significant example, titled The Game, Schapiro wrote:

"In 1960 I made a picture called The Game. The Game is the game of making a real world on canvas. The Game is also the game of knowing that the made world can never be wholly real. The Game was the first painting to use the box as a symbol. The box became a house. I could no longer live in the jungle. I built the house out of all things I was unsure of and certain about. I called it a 'Shrine.'"

Schapiro’s “Shrine” paintings of the early 1960s, which were the subject of a solo exhibition at Emmerich in 1963, eliminate the gestural in favor of illusionistically rendered, metaphysical compositions where symbols like an egg, personal items like paint tubes, or references to art historical paintings, are set within the apertures of a shrine form. 

In 1967, Schapiro moved to California for her husband, painter Paul Brach, to serve as the chair of the newly formed art department faculty at the University of California San Diego. Art historian Maddy Henkin writes, “In the male-dominated department, Schapiro had no colleagues with whom she could share her growing interest in the women’s movement. As a result, Schapiro retreated into her studio until she discovered collaborators of an altogether new kind: the scientific community.”

Beginning in 1967, Schapiro used computers and custom software to create monumental hard-edged abstractions that still evoke the female form and perspective, and often reflect the landscape and architecture of Southern California. She worked with Jef Raskin, lead designer of the first Macintosh computer, and physicist David Nabilov. Henkin describes: 

"Though her exact method varied over time, Schapiro always began with a simple hand-drawn shape related to vaginal iconography. The drawing would then be translated into numbers representing points on a grid that a custom computer software would rotate through space, printing out 50 views of the artist’s original drawing…Once she selected her shape, Schapiro planned the composition and then used an opaque projector to enlarge the image onto her canvas, traced the shape with a pencil, taped off the contours, and spray painted. Finally, with gusto, she removed the tape."

In 1976, Schapiro became a founding member of the Heresies Collective, a group of feminist political artists. She co-authored, with artist Melissa Meyer, an article which termed this work “femmage.” “Femmage” was defined with specific criteria, some of which include using remnants or scraps, and including covert imagery.

1976 was also the year of Schapiro’s final exhibition with Emmerich. It is significant that she showed works incorporating lace, needlepoint, floral prints, and items such as aprons. Emmerich, although known as a champion of Color Field painting, had wide-ranging interests, and also mounted important exhibitions of pre-Columbian art. Upon her return to New York in 1975, Schapiro felt the support of the artist community that defined Emmerich Gallery. As Henkin writes, “the Emmerich gallery was not only a commercial venue, but a space where she could experiment, show an ever-evolving practice, and prove herself as an artist.”

Miriam Schapiro’s Abstract Expressionist work is currently on view in the exhibition Action, Gesture, Paint at the Whitechapel Gallery, London; while her femmage painting is on view in the exhibition Too Much is Just Right: The Legacy of Pattern and Decoration at the Asheville Museum of Art, North Carolina. Schapiro’s work is in the permanent collections of museums worldwide including the Metropolitan Museum of Art, The Whitney Museum, The Museum of Modern Art, New York; The National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.; and the Museum of Moderner Kunst, Vienna, Austria. 

About the Artist

Miriam Schapiro (1923–2015) is widely known as a pioneer of the Women’s Art Movement and a leading force in American post-World War II art. Following her formal training at the University of Iowa, she moved to New York with her husband, Paul Brach and integrated into the New York School. Recognized for her colorful and sensuous abstractions of this period, Schapiro showed regularly at André Emmerich Gallery, where in 1958, she was the first woman to have a solo exhibition.

Schapiro has been the subject of numerous exhibitions and her work is held in collections worldwide, including the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Museum of Modern Art (New York), the Museum of Fine Art (Boston), and the Peter and Irene Ludwig Collection, Germany. In 2018, the Museum of Arts and Design in New York presented Surface/Depth: The Decorative after Miriam Schapiro, presenting Schapiro’s femmage work alongside the work of contemporary artists.