Support Independent Arts Journalism As an independent publication, we rely on readers like you to fund our journalism and keep our reporting and criticism free and accessible to all. If you value our coverage and want to support more of it, consider becoming a member today. CHICAGO — In 1968, Christina Ramberg exhibited 16 small, strange, meticulous paintings of women’s hairdos.
Each square panel featured a White woman’s head, seen from behind, her dark hair manipulated by an apparently female hand, the background an acidic gray-green. She was only 22 years old, and she had it all figured out art-wise. That much is clear from the get-go in the Art Institute’s Christina Ramberg: A Retrospective , the first comprehensive survey in nearly three decades of the fetishistically fantastic work of one of the lesser-known — but, to my mind, most exciting — artists often grouped together as the Chicago Imagists.
A companion show in the museum’s prints and drawings galleries, Four Chicago Artists , includes work by my other favorite, Barbara Rossi, a great friend of Ramberg. Both belonged to a wildly original generation of local artists, many of whom studied and taught at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, exhibited at the Hyde Park Art Center, collected folk and non-Western art, and regularly visited the open-air Maxwell Street flea market. The Ramberg retrospective, co-curated by Thea Liberty Nichols and Mark Pascale, and slated for travel to Los Angeles and Phi.
