Gladys Nilsson
(American, born 1940)
Biography
Gladys Nilsson is a contemporary American artist known for her densely constructed watercolors and collages. Like other member of the Chicago Imagists, such as Art Green, Karl Wirsum, and her husband Jim Nutt, Nilsson’s works are both formally inventive and filled with bizarre imagery. “Sometimes her adornments are crippling. They create rhythms, like when the arcs are repetitions of the arcs of her body,” Nilsson explained of the female figures in her work. Born on May 6, 1940 in Chicago, IL, Nilsson went on to study at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. While at school she met Jim Nutt, who she married in 1961, it was while she pregnant with their child that Nilsson switched from painting with oils to watercolors to avoid the toxicity of paint thinner. During the mid-1960s, the artist developed her cartoonish and surreal style, influenced by a host of sources, including Vogue magazine, George Grosz, 15th-century Italian paintings, and Charles E. Burchfield. She and her peers became known as the Hairy Who, after an exhibit of the same name in 1967, which jokingly referenced the local Chicago art critic Harry Bouras. Over the decades, Nilsson’s work has grown increasingly labyrinthine, filling up every corner of each surface with idiosyncratic figures and objects. The artist continues to live and work in Chicago, IL. Today, her works are held in the collections of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, The Museum of Modern Art in New York, the Art Institute of Chicago, and the Smithsonian American Art Museum in Washington, D.C., among others.
Gladys Nilsson Artworks
Gladys Nilsson
(128 results)
-.jpg "Fancy Dress Ball (After 'Their Stylish New..., 1975")
Gladys Nilsson
Probably from the "Domestic Goddess Series", 1990
Sale Date: April 25, 2024
Auction Closed
English (US)
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