Ed Paschke

(American, 1939–2004)

Ed Paschke was an American painter best known for his neon-hued images of pin-up posters, glowing televisions, and classical Greek sculptures. Influenced by the Pop Art of Andy Warhol, Paschke produced works which darkly mirrored media culture rather than mimicked it, as seen in his hallmark work Pink Lady (1970). “Life is very much about rule breaking, about confrontation. Otherwise history would just stand still,” he once reflected. “Someone has to come along and break the rules and try for whatever reason to go about things a different way. Even if it is a simple sense of adventure, a sense of exploration.” Born on June 22, 1939 in Chicago, IL, he studied at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and later worked as a freelance illustrator for Playboy. Drafted into the Army, during his service Paschke illustrated manuals given out to new soldiers. Having returned to Chicago, he began exhibiting at the Hyde Park Center during the late 1960s and became a part of a loosely grouped bunch of artists known as the Chicago Imagists, which included Jim Nutt, Gladys Nilsson, and Philip Hanson. The artist died on November 25, 2004 in Chicago, IL. Today, he is remembered through the Ed Paschke Art Center which preserves his work while also servicing the art community of Chicago. His works are held in the collections of the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis, the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden in Washington, D.C., the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York, and the Centre Georges Pompidou in Paris, among others.