May Stevens, a painter who for more than 60 years devoted her art to political causes like the civil rights, antiwar and feminist movements, died on Dec. 9 at an assisted-living and memory-loss facility in Santa Fe, N.M. She was 95. The Ryan Lee gallery, which represented her in New York, said the cause was Alzheimer’s disease. Ms. Stevens was part of a generation of activist artists, which also included her husband, Rudolf Baranik, and their close friends Leon Golub and Nancy Spero. Through the rise of Minimalism and Conceptualism, these artists adhered to an older tradition of expressive painting, and to a belief in the value of art as an instrument of progressive politics and personal liberation. “The reason I’m an artist,” she said in an interview with the art historian Patricia Hills for the 2005 book “May Stevens,” “is because it’s a place where you can be totally free.

Source: New York Times December 26, 2019 16:41 UTC