Thomas Chimes

Thomas Chimes (1921–2009) was an influential painter and artist from Philadelphia. His work is in important public collections, including those of the Philadelphia Museum of Art,Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, the Museum of Modern Art in New York, the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C.,The Phillips Collection in Washington, D.C., the Corcoran Gallery in Washington, D.C., the Ringling Museum of Art in Sarasota, FL, the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, the Wadsworth Atheneum in Hartford, Connecticut, and the Yale University Art Gallery in New Haven, Connecticut, among others.

Thomas James Chimes was born to Greek immigrant parents in Philadelphia in 1921. In 1939 he became enrolled in the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts. His studies were interrupted by the US involvement in World War 2, in which he joined the US Air Force. After World War 2, Thomas began studying again, in New York: philosophy at Columbia University and painting and sculpture at Art Students League. While there he painted several portraits that fell in line with the New York trends of the time. However, he decided to move back to Philadelphia in 1953 and became a fellow of the National Endowment of the Arts and established his studio there. In Philadelphia, he would develop his own, more personal style.

Throughout the decades Chimes would continue to reinvent his style with four major periods of work. The artist's work also shows a strong penchant for evocative images reflecting his interest in several of the great writers of the early to middle years of the twentieth century, including Alfred Jarry, Antonin Artaud, and James Joyce. In particular, Jarry's concept of "pataphysics" informs the artist's work.

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