As he continued to work in New York (and, after 1964, in Chicago), his paintings eventually embraced figurative art again and sometimes combined the two.
In the 1970s, he became an activist in the art world as a founding member of The Five, a group of abstract artists who worked together to hold exhibitions of large-scale works in the lobbies of Chicago buildings, and an active member of the Artemisia Gallery. , a feminist cooperative there.
By then, he had begun teaching at the University of Chicago, where he remained a respected member of the faculty until 1995.
“Vera taught me that a painter must balance art and ideas: too much skill and a painting is boring, too conceptual and a painting without blood,” Joanne Berens, a former student, wrote in an email. “Although her own ideas came from European high culture, Vera was never a snob and she encouraged her students to express ideas that arose from their own lives.”
Ms. Klement received a Guggenheim Fellowship in 1981.
In addition to her son, she is survived by her life partner, Peter Baker, a retired pediatrician. Her marriages to Werner Torkanowsky, a violinist and conductor, and Ralph Shapey, a composer and conductor, ended in divorce.
In 2019, Klement completed “Carpeted,” an abstract expressionist painting of a flying carpet. When he finished, he left.
“She was slowing down and doing fewer and fewer paintings,” said her son, Mr. Shapey. “She hadn't run out of ideas. But she looked at him and said, 'I've said everything I want.'”
