Shirley Kassman (1929-1991)

Invisible/Divisible was included in the solo exhibition, Shirley Kassman: 14 Years, organized by Nancy Weekly and presented at the Burchfield Art Center in 1987. Kassman’s Invisibility Series reflects her feminist aesthetic and personal experiences that are universally faced by women in the arts and in teaching. Symbolically it represents women artists and educators who are not treated equally by their male colleagues, do not receive pay parity, and have fewer exhibition and sales opportunities. The life-sized, divided figure suggests alienation and isolation made emphatic by the red outline, as if it documents where a corpse had been found. At the time Invisible/Divisible was created, Shirley Kassman considered this to be her most important work.