An electrifying tribute to the unique career of Gladys Nilsson, pioneer of the “Hairy Who” movement. Spanning five decades and featuring 100 color plates, this magnificent volume is the most comprehensive monograph to date on Chicago painter Gladys Nilsson (born in 1940).
Although Nilsson is best known for the watercolors she began exhibiting in the mid-1960s and as an original member of the “Hairy Who,” she devoted much of her career to acrylic painting. This monograph begins with her panel and Plexiglas paintings from the 1960s, then examines her canvas paintings from the 1970s, including the very large work “Dipped Dick: Adam and Eve after Cranach,” based on Cranach, where the title characters are surrounded by a menagerie of cavernous plants and animals.
The book ends with his recent, very lively paintings, which are teeming with characters. As Nilsson describes it, “I draw a large character, but that character always needs another character, and those two characters need a third to interact with. And then, before I know it, the whole space is swarming.”
