Jim Nutt: Coming Into Character April 20, 2011

Since 1990, Jim Nutt has focused exclusively on female heads, in spare line drawings and richly detailed paintings. This exhibition is a retrospective of Jim Nutt's work that emphasizes the development of these important paintings through their precedents in his own work. Acknowledging the groundswell of interest in this unique American artist's work, this is the first major presentation of Nutt's work in over a decade. Nutt's history as an important artist dates to the mid-1960s where in Chicago he was a chief instigator of the irreverent "Hairy Who" group, now better known as the Imagists. While it was undoubtedly inspired as much by the popular culture of the mid-twentieth century, especially comic books, advertisements, juke-box and pinball machine art, and street signs, Nutt's art also explored the formal devices and techniques of historical painting. Northern European portraiture of the 15th and 16th century; Colonial American painting; the color and line explorations of Henri Matisse and Joan Miro; the quirky individualism of such artists as John Graham, Max Ernst, Arshile Gorky, and H.C. Westermann all offered lessons as Nutt has matured over four decades of artistic development.