Contemporary Art & Design presents works by ‘The Chicago Imagists‘
Chicago Imagists
Works by Jim Nutt & Gladys Nilsson
The spouses, Gladys Nilsson and Jim Nutt, are part of the ‘Chicago Imagists’. Both met while studying at the Art Institute of Chicago in the 1960s. Together with their fellow students, Art Green, Suellen Rocca, Jim Falconer, and Karl Wisum, they came to create the artist group ‘Hairy Who’. During the active years 1966-1969, the group became widely known and was a counterpoint to Pop and Minimalism, the popular movements at the time.
› Signed Jim Nutt and dated 1992 on verso. Acrylic on canvas in the artist's frame 64.5 x 64.5 cm. Estimate 3 000 000 - 5 000 000 SEK.
Caroline Goldstein writes in Artnet, May 16, 2018:
‘The rag-tag group of artists known as the Imagists gained a certain notoriety in 1960s Chicago for creating art populated by monstrous cartoons, illogical landscapes, and puerile (often downright disgusting) scenes. The bright colors and garish figures take cues from comic books, folk art, and Surrealism, not so much blurring the boundaries between high and low culture but forsaking them altogether. Artists of Chicago subgroups like the Hairy Who and Monster Roster made the concurrent Pop art movement sweeping New York look like a scene from Norman Rockwell’s Saturday Evening Post. While Roy Lichtenstein and James Rosenquist were elevating graphic arts—and making a case for white-cube gallery acceptance—the Imagist’s work was never more polished than the comics that served as inspiration.’
In the auction Contemporary Art & Design, we are happy to include a characteristic portrait by
Jim Nutt, ‘Huge’, from 1992, and a typical watercolour by Gladys Nilsson, titled ‘Summer Rain’ and executed in 1982. In both works, you get a good sense of the expression of the Chicago Imagists.
› Signed Gladys Nilsson and dated 1982 on verso. Watercolor on paper 105 x 74.5 cm. Estimate 150 000 - 200 000 SEK.
The works are sold at Contemporary Art & Design
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