Nora Speyer (1922–2024) was a fiercely expressive American painter whose career spanned the rise and evolution of postwar abstraction. Known for her lush, allegorical figures and psychologically charged landscapes, Speyer infused her paintings with emotional complexity and painterly intensity. Born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, to a prominent Jewish family, she began her formal training at Tyler College of Art and the Carnegie Institute before leaving school to follow her future husband, artist Sideo Fromboluti, to Kansas City during World War II. Their creative and romantic partnership endured for over six decades.

In 1948, the couple relocated to New York City, where they became active participants in the burgeoning downtown artist-run gallery movement that helped define American Abstract Expressionism. Speyer exhibited regularly at the Tanager, Stable, and Poindexter galleries—key venues in the cooperative gallery scene that fostered some of the era’s most important innovations. Her work was also shown abroad, notably at Galerie Facchetti and Galerie Darthea Speyer in Paris. A committed advocate for community and experimentation, she was a founding member of Landmark Gallery in SoHo and Long Point Gallery in Provincetown, both of which played vital roles in supporting artists outside the commercial mainstream.

Throughout her career, Speyer explored the relationship between form and feeling through a deeply personal visual language. Her paintings often featured allegorical female figures rendered with thick impasto and bold gestures—images that simultaneously evoked sensuality, vulnerability, and resistance. She frequently revisited themes of mythology, nature, and feminine agency, translating them into dynamic compositions layered with color and texture. Her still lifes and landscapes, though quieter in tone, retained the same emotional intensity and atmospheric richness.

Speyer’s paintings are held in over twenty public and institutional collections, including the Museum of Modern Art, the Corcoran Gallery of Art, the Carnegie Museum of Art, and the National Gallery of Art. She also exhibited widely in Provincetown and was deeply connected to the Wellfleet artistic community, where she and Fromboluti spent decades painting and entertaining at their home near Higgins Pond.

Her legacy as both a painter and a cultural organizer is marked by an unwavering commitment to authenticity, experimentation, and personal vision. Even into her later years, Speyer continued to paint daily, producing works that fused formal vigor with emotional resonance. She passed away in 2024 at the age of 101, leaving behind a profound and quietly influential body of work—one that continues to inspire for its depth, candor, and enduring sense of wonder.