Christina Ramberg

(American, 1946–1995)

Christina Ramberg was an American painter known for her muted depictions of female torsos and heads bound in corset-like forms. Tightly composed and fetishistically rendered, Ramberg’s works were influenced by the restrictive girdles and undergarments worn by women during the 1950s. “She would wear these—I guess that they are called ‘Merry Widows’—and I can remember being stunned by how it transformed her body, how it pushed up her breasts and slendered down her waist,” she once explained of watching her mother dress for parties as a child. Born in 1946 in Fort Campbell, KY, she grew up in various military bases around the world, as her father was an Army colonel during World War II and Vietnam. She went on to study at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago where she met her future husband Philip Hanson, as well as Jim Nutt and Gladys Nilsson. Together they became known as the Chicago Imagists, developing a visual dialogue based in popular culture, comic books, and folk art, which existed outside the trajectory of New York’s art world. Through the 1970s, Ramberg began introducing other elements into her work, including electric tower shapes, shoulder pads, urns, and chairs. Diagnosed with a rare neurogenerative disorder known as Pick’s disease during the late 1980s, Ramberg succumbed to the illness of December 10, 1995. Today, her works are held in the collections of The Museum of Modern Art in New York, the Smithsonian American Art Museum in Washington, D.C., and the Smart Museum of Art in Chicago, among others.