Evelyn Statsinger

Richard Gray Gallery is deeply saddened to announce the passing of artist Evelyn Statsinger. Statsinger, who translated the rhythms of natural forms into fantastical and precise paintings, drawings and sculptures, died Saturday, February 13, 2016 in Chicago, Illinois. She was 88 years old.

Statsinger initially rose to prominence with her early drawings, endlessly detailed works on paper that caught the attention of luminaries and curators in Chicago, New York and Los Angeles. Early exhibitions at the Art Institute of Chicago in 1952 and 1957 and the Whitney Museum of American Art in 1954 led Time Magazine to call her “an honored one among American abstractionists” while lauding her “great mastery of textural effects.” She was frequently included in discussions of the Monster Roster school of Chicago artists, as well as the later, broader conversation around Chicago Imagism. Throughout her life, however, Statsinger made work that was profoundly individual and fiercely independent.

Evelyn Statsinger’s work resides in major public collections including the Art Institute of Chicago, the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Art, and the Smithsonian American Art Museum. At the time of this writing, her paintings, drawings, and collages are on view in three museum exhibitions across Chicago: Surrealism: The Conjured Life at the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, Homegrown at the Art Institute of Chicago, and Monster Roster at the Smart Museum of Art. Her most recent solo exhibition was a career survey at Richard Gray Gallery in the fall of 2015. Titled A Gathering, the exhibition was praised in Art in America for its originality and breadth, a body of work that appears “especially fresh as it shifts from enigmatic figuration to nature-based abstraction.”