Barbara T. Smith, Just Plain Facts, 1965-66. Courtesy of Andrew Kreps Gallery.
Barbara T. Smith, Xerox, Birth, 1965-66. Courtesy of Andrew Kreps Gallery.
In 1958, in the midst of an identity crisis, Californian artist Barbara T. Smith visited a psychotherapist for the first time. Smith, who was in her late twenties and married with children, later described the isolation she experienced as common. The first generation of American, college-educated women who married into domestic servility went into crisis; that crisis, in part, gave rise to second-wave feminism. Smith had previously attended Pomona College and studied painting, art history, and religion; she married two years before graduating in 1953, and quickly bore three children.