Barbara Rossi

Provenance:
Sold: Susanin's Auctioneers, March 25, 2021, Lot 6020
Private Collection

Literature:
Dennis Adrian, Barbara Rossi: Selected Works, 1967-1990, The Renaissance Society at The University of Chicago, Chicago, Illinois, 1991, pp. 12


Lot Note:

A champion of clarity and unique graphic vision, Barbara Rossi’s distinctive painterly formula rated her a key contributor and beloved artist within the Chicago Imagists. Within this band of creatives, which boasts other noted artists such as Christina Ramberg, Jim Nutt, Gladys Nilsson, and Karl Wirsum, existed an artistic current where formal sensibilities were shared and reimagined. Some shared visual characteristics included an exploration of organic shapes, execution of sharp contours, choice of vivid color, and calculated applications of paint. Imagism is also defined by its content which is inherently figurative and whimsical. Out of these shared proclivities, Rossi’s works are celebrated for their clarity of expression, where compositions are calculated and linework is neatly defined. Extracting from the figure, Rossi paints inventive anatomies and complicated structural interiors that cleverly reach into the territory of abstraction. Words for the Water is a prominent painting that reflects the artist’s distinctive oeuvre. Here her fixation on the reimagined figure contains weighted bodily shapes that twist and circulate within a colored atmosphere.