Thea Liberty Nichols – författare

A deep look at Christina Ramberg’s life and work, the origins of her influential investigations of form and femininity, and the evolution of her artistic vision  Christina Ramberg (1946–1995) first gained renown for her acrylic-on-board paintings from the 1960s and 1970s that feature stylized fragments of female figures. Often associated with Chicago Imagism, Ramberg’s distinct linear approach was informed by a wide range of popular and art-historical sources, resulting in works that are both highly polished and grippingly enigmatic. The first comprehensive consideration of the artist since her death, this study considers the full scope of her practice—from her intimate early scrapbooks and drawings to her late-career geometric abstractions—and includes the first substantive discussion of her often-overlooked quiltmaking. Essays from both scholars and artists situate Ramberg within her Chicago-based network of colleagues and approach her work from a variety of perspectives, such as gender and sexual identity, the body and disability studies, artistic craft, canon formation, and pedagogical practice. Featuring never-before-published diaries, sketchbooks, slides, and ephemera, this lavishly illustrated volume provides an unprecedentedly full picture of Ramberg’s lifelong fascination with patterns and formal variation and her impact on the art of the twentieth century.Distributed for The Art Institute of Chicago   Exhibition schedule:  The Art Institute of Chicago(April 20–August 11, 2024)   Hammer Museum, Los Angeles(October 6, 2024–January 5, 2025)   Philadelphia Museum of Art(February 8–June 1, 2025)

Fifty years of American artist Carroll Dunham’s distinctive, energetic drawings  For five decades, Carroll Dunham (b. 1949) has created paintings, prints, and sometimes sculptures, but drawing has always been the foundation of his practice. He has archived thousands of drawings as part of his daily routine, a selection of which are presented here and many of which have never been published before.  As a young artist in the 1980s, Dunham asserted himself as a painter and worked abstractly at a time when Expressionism was ascendent. In subsequent decades his biomorphic abstractions gave way to outright figuration, with the artist creating hypersexualized, cartoon-like, violent, and sometimes grotesque characters that have been linked to underground comix, West Coast Funk Art, or Midwestern Chicago Imagism. His current work features green and purple people in bucolic landscapes engaged in battle or bacchanal. Other works consider the role of the artist, artist’s studio, and art object, deeply influenced by philosophy, psychology, and an examination of gender and sexuality. Featuring about 115 works from the 1970s to today, this volume illuminates the depth of Dunham’s drawing practice.  Distributed for the Art Institute of Chicago  Exhibition Schedule:  Art Institute of Chicago (January 31–June 1, 2026)