Untitled, (Il renonce au coit...)

This 1970 collage by Nancy Spero, titled "Il renonce au coit..." (He renounces coitus...), is one of the American feminist artist's most directly confrontational works, the image combining blue chalk, wet brush, and collage on ivory wove paper to create a visceral exploration of sexual refusal and patriarchal impotence. The composition shows fragmented text and bodily forms assembled in a way that suggests both the violence of sexual politics and the possibility of resistance, the blue chalk creating a cool, analytical tone that contrasts with the raw emotional content of the subject. The wet brush technique creates bleeding, blurred marks that suggest both the fluidity of the body and the instability of gender boundaries, the collage fragments creating a visual texture that is both layered and torn, the assembled image suggesting the piecing together of a shattered identity. The 1970 date places this work in the same period as the other 1970 collages, suggesting that Spero was producing a series of works that explored the intersection of language, sexuality, and power through the medium of collage. Art historians have connected this work to the broader tradition of body art and feminist performance, from the blood works of Kiki Smith to the sexual imagery of Carolee Schneemann, noting that Spero's treatment is more text-based, more focused on the linguistic construction of sexuality than the physical immediacy of these contemporaries. The work also demonstrates Spero's mastery of the delicate Japanese and ivory papers that she favored: the fragility of the support becomes a metaphor for the fragility of the subject, the material vulnerability enhancing the emotional impact.

This 1970 collage confronted patriarchal sexual refusal through blue-chalk analytical coolness and wet-brush gender bleeding, using ivory-paper material fragility to make linguistic construction of sexuality viscerally resistant.

It matters because Spero drew a body in pieces and made the fragments feel like they were fighting back—proving that even a torn paper could be a weapon if the words were right.