Following the critically acclaimed Camels installation at the Whitney Museum in 1969 and a period focused solely on painting, Graves returned to sculpture in the 1980s with renewed experimentation. Graves became one of the first contemporary artists to experiment with bronze casting, whereby she organized cast bronze objects, typically food and plants, into asymmetrical sculptures that addressed notions of balance and space. Nike takes its name from the Greek goddess of victory, and is imbued with the speed and gracefulness of its namesake.
Using found objects, Graves collaborated with Pichard Polich of the Tallix Foundry New York, to cast ephemeral and natural materials in metal. Without relying on preparatory sketches, she worked in an improvisational manner, assembling her gravity defying sculptures intuitively. Her process emphasized a sense of balance, exploring the tension between gravity and weightlessness. The resulting works have a subdued color palette. Graves employed three primary methods to apply color to her sculptures: patination, fired enamel, and polyurethane paint, fusing the color to the metal and giving the sculptures their distinct finish and striking coloration.
- M. Knoedler & Co., New York, NY, Nancy Graves: New Bronze Sculpture 3/10/1984.
- Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington, D.C., Nancy Graves: A Sculpture Retrospective 2/19/1987. Additional Venues: The Fort Worth Art Musuem, Fort Worth, TX, May 17-July 12, 1987; Santa Barbara Art Museum, Santa Barbara, CA, August 29-October 25, 1987; The Brooklyn Museum, Brooklyn, NY, December 11, 1987-February 29, 1988
- Neuberger Museum of Art, Purchase College, State University of New York, Purchase, NY, Contemporary Classicism 2/21/1999. Additional Venues: Tampa Museum of Art, Tampa, FL, November 9,1999-January 16, 2000.
- Christie's, New York, NY, First Open: Post-War and Contemporary Art 9/17/2005.
- First Open: Post-War and Contemporary Art, Christie's, New York, NY, September 23, 2005, p. 113, lot 110.
- Carmean, Jr., E.A., The Sculpture of Nancy Graves: A Catalogue Raisonne, Hudson Hills Press, New York, NY in association with the Fort Worth Art Museum, Fort Worth, TX, 1987, pp. 117, cat. no. 132 illus. and 195.
- Collins, Amy Fine and Bradley Collins, Jr., The Sum of the Parts, Art in America, June 1988, p. 117.
- Collischan, Judy., Contemporary Classicism, Neuberger Museum of Art, Purchase College, State Univeristy of New York, Purchase, NY, 1999, pp. 17 and 31, cat. no. 26.
- Grant, Daniel, The Art of Nancy Graves is 'Well Into the Six Figures', Artnewsletter, October 3, 2006, p. 5.