This exhibition catalogue marks the 20th anniversary of the death of American artist Nancy Graves (1939-1995), featuring work from the first half of her career, from 1969 to 1982. In 1969, Graves became internationally recognized as the first female artist to receive a solo retrospective at the Whitney Museum in New York City. It was at this exhibition that her now iconic series Camels was first displayed--a collection of three larger-than-life camels made from animal hides, burlap, wax and fiberglass. Graves, filled with curiosity about the natural world, continued to work with the image of these majestic and mysterious creatures. In 1970, she fabricated steel camel skeletons for Inside-Outside, and in the same year, she captured them in their natural habitat in the Sahara for her rarely exhibited film Izy Boukir. Alongside the artist's sculptures and films, this publication also includes her large-scale watercolors and pointillist-style canvases.
Text by: Christopher Lyon, Christina Hunter, Linda Nochlin