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Curated by Mark Pascale, the Janet and Craig Duchossois Curator of Prints and Drawings at the Art Institute of Chicago and Adjunct Professor at SAIC, this exhibition at the Art Institute of Chicago museum features the work of SAIC alumni. Beginning with the early 20th century and organized by decade, the display presents works by some of the most illustrious SAIC-educated artists while also prominently featuring pieces by those whose tenure at the school has at times been overlooked.
Highlights include 20 iconic self-portraits by Ivan Albright (SAIC, 1919–23, HON 1977), created at the end his career using a variety of drawing and painting media, and a selection of color woodblock prints by Gustave Baumann (SAIC 1897), a Santa Fe–based artist, designer and letterpress printer who studied at SAIC as a teenager.
Also included are the sketchbooks of Margo Hoff (SAIC 1934–37) and LeRoy Neiman (SAIC 1946–50); Neiman’s drawings of Chicago’s Oak Street Beach, in particular, showcase the glitterati of a period typified by Hugh Hefner’s founding of Playboy in the city in 1953. Pieces by the Monster Roster artists who matured in the late 1940s and early 1950s—including Cosmo Campoli (BFA 1950), Leon Golub (BFA 1949, MFA 1950, HON 1982), and Nancy Spero (BFA 1949, HON 1991)—and Imagist and Hairy Who artists such as Gladys Nilsson (BFA 1962), Suellen Rocca (BFA 1964), Sarah Canright (BFA 1964), and Christina Ramberg (BA 1968, MFA 1973), along with a variety of more recent works, round out the approximately 120 selections.
