Gladys Nilsson
| Gladys Nilsson | |
|---|---|
| Born |
May 6, 1940 Chicago, Illinois |
| Nationality | American |
| Education | Art Institute of Chicago |
| Known for | Painting |
| Movement | Chicago Imagism |
| Spouse(s) | Jim Nutt |
Gladys M. Nilsson (born May 6, 1940) is an American artist, one of the original Hairy Who Chicago Imagists, a group in the 1960s and 1970s who turned to representational art. Her paintings "set forth a surreal mixture of fantasy and domesticity in a continuous parade of chaotic images." She is married to fellow-artist and Hairy Who member Jim Nutt.
Gladys Nilsson was born to Swedish immigrant parents. Her father was a factory worker for Sunbeam and her mother a waitress. She grew up on the north side of Chicago and attended Lake View High School, while also attending extracurricular drawing classes. Against her parents' blue collar sensibilities, she attended the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, where she met her future husband, fellow student Jim Nutt. Nilsson and Nutt married in July 1961, and their son, Claude, was born in 1962. Although Nilsson originally painted with oil paints, she switched to watercolors when pregnant in order to avoid the hazards of turpentine. She initially found it difficult to strike a balance between motherhood and her career in painting, though she states that she never considered giving up painting.
In 1963, Nilsson and Nutt were introduced to School of the Art Institute of Chicago art history professor Whitney Halstead, who became a teacher, mentor, and friend. He introduced them in turn to Don Baum, exhibition director at the Hyde Park Art Center in Chicago. In 1964 Nilsson and Nutt became youth instructors at the Hyde Park Art Center.
Gladys Nilsson's influences were far ranging and included German Expressionism, 15th Century Italian painting, Egyptian tomb murals, Cubism, and, more specifically, Whitney Halstead, Katherine Blackshear, James Ensor, George Grosz, Paul Klee, Georges Seurat, John Marin, and Charles Burchfield. The result was a style that bordered on surrealism and pop, fantasy and cartoon. She took the human figure as her main subject, magnifying, multiplying, and distorting these figures as she saw fit. Though her work is technically very accomplished, she is not as well known as some of her Hairy Who colleagues, because, art historically speaking, paper was seen as a lesser medium than, say, canvas. Also, art world bias has always been in favor of male rather than female artists. Both of these facts angered Gladys, who had a true love for paper and believed that art could not and should not be classified as either masculine or feminine.
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