Anita Steckel, feminist erotic artist, dies age 82

Sarah Macshane                                                                                                                  WVoN, co-editor

Anita Steckel, founder of the feminist art movement, has died at the age of 82.

Little known until the 1970s, she appropriated eroticism in her art in order to establish the right of women to make art from the male figure, just as men were doing with the female figure.

In 1973 she set off a tabloid furore with explicit pieces of arts which showed men and women engaged in suggestive sexual acts.

Her response was to form an organization of female artists called the Fight Censorship Group, with this mission statement:

‘if the erect penis is not wholesome enough to go into museums, it should not be considered wholesome enough to go into women.’

Richard Meyer, an art historian and professor at the University of South California described Steckel as “fearless”, an artist who wasn’t scared to push the boundaries and address issues of gender, pleasure and sexual politics.

She had always felt a tension between being a woman who liked men and being an artist who chafed at the limits that men had historically placed on women.

As a pioneer of the feminist art movement, Steckel gave other female artists the courage to stand up to the patriarchy by using erotic and sexual art.