Jim Nutt

(American, born 1938)

Jim Nutt is an American artist known for his imaginary female portraits. Often composed of discolored facial features and oddly positioned eyes, Nutt’s bizarre yet vibrant works are painted over many sessions. The artist, alongside his wife Gladys Nilsson, Karl Wirsum, and Christina Ramberg, helped to form what became known as the Chicago Imagists during the late 1960s. “I start with one thing and then try to put something else with it, meaning a nose with an eye,” he explained. “Then I add to that combination or change one of those two because they’re not quite right. It’s a constant process of adding and subtracting.” Born James T. Nutt on November 28, 1938 in Pittsfield, MA, he studied at a number of colleges before ending up at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. It was at school in Chicago, that Nutt met Gladys Nilsson, whom he married in 1961. Over the following decade, Nutt and Nilsson began exhibiting alongside a group of artists that became known as the Hairy Who. It was during this time that the artist landed on the invented subject matter that shaped his career. Influential on a generation of younger painters, including Carroll Dunham, Nutt’s work exists outside the traditional narrative of Post-War American art. The artist continues to live and work in Chicago, IL. Today, his works are held in the collections of The Museum of Modern Art in New York, the Smithsonian American Art Museum in Washington, D.C., the Art Institute of Chicago, and the High Museum of Art in Atlanta,