Displaying items by tag: Howard Finster

Gatecrashers. That’s the term newspapers nearly 100 years ago called the works of self-taught artists when they began “crashing the gates” of the elite art world. It was then when names like Horace Pippin, Anna Mary Robertson (Grandma Moses), and Martin Ramírez were just beginning to be considered consequential contributors to America’s creative excellence.

Since then, a broader understanding and appreciation has grown for the vision and perspective of artists who, for an assortment of reasons, remained or continue to be, untrained. Once the focus shifts from the origins or situational attributes of the artist and to the artistic quality and merit of their artwork, the wealth of talent obscured by bias becomes infinitely more visible.

Recently renovated into a bright jewel-box of an exhibition space, Intuit Art Museum (IAM) in West Town has been championing the output of self-taught and outsider artists for the past 35 years. A trio of new exhibitions that opened in early April gives testimony to the vitality and psychological energy emanating from this branch of the art world. The showings also offer a fresh re-introduction to the breadth of aesthetic beauty found in this creative offshoot. Art at its most natural and original.

Installation views courtesy Intuit Art Museum

Life is an Art: The Collection of Jan Petry showcases the discerning eye of one collector in this rich and highly varied genre. Petry, who enjoyed a long affiliation with IAM when she served as a museum board member for several years, donated more than 60 works from her collection to the museum before her death in 2024. Including paintings, sculptures, folk art and subject matter that was extremely dear to her personally, the Life is an Art exhibition reveals how deep and diverse self-taught art can be.

Greek born Drossos Skyllas’s painting, Tree of Life creates an otherworldly mood of surreal calm as it tells a timeless story regeneration. The skill in which Skyllas manipulates light, causing the painting to be bright and subdued at the same time, immediately attracts. Initially the contrast draws you to the painting where, once you’re before it, you fall even deeper into its compositional riddle.

Tree of Life by Drossos Skylla - M. Oldham, photography

Across the room, a Martin Ramírez watercolor with crayon and paper, (Untitled - Caballero 1950) captures with its subtle complexity. Ramirez often depicted men on horseback, warriors from some bygone south of the border past. In Caballero, a man sits on his mount pointing a highly stylized pistol. The intricate pattern of lines surrounding him on three sides makes him look as if he’s on a stage. Above him, a lavishly ornate canopy locks him in, creating a snapshot of some real or imagined experience through “a world of patterns and repetitions”.

Caballero by Martin Ramirez- M. Oldham, photography

Paintings that spring from biblical inspirations give artistic expression to deeply held belief. The end results can be stunning. Reverend Samuel David Phillips' Revelations gains power the longer you look at it. Through Phillips’ depiction of the seven headed beast in the Bible’s last chapter, he captures the unfathomable essence of apocalypse.

Revelations by Reverend Samuel David Phillips - M. Oldham, photography

Considered one of the most famous self-taught artists of the 20th century, Howard Finster tweaks a conventional portrait piece by turning it into a well-intentioned warning. In his painting Earth Being Watched, otherworldly but seemingly amiable spirits and a single angel peer over and around mountain peaks at three people meaningful, in their own way, to the artist. One of them is Finster’s grandson. The image and the message are a far departure from Revelations’ apprehensive prophesy and show how divergent faith-based art can be in the self-taught realm.

The exhibition dedicated to the Petry collection churns with work that surprises and stimulates; admirably encapsulating the diverse wonder that can be found in this stream of creativity.

In the adjoining room, elegant futuristic whimsy made of tin fill a warmly lit welcoming space. Drawing with Metal: Sculpture by Bill Brady takes self-taught art to a very unexpected place. One full of sleek timeless conjectures of the imagination constructed of light weight metal. Now in his 80’s and still prolific, Brady learned metalworking from his father and went from re-producing the past to designing and making his own creations. Many of them intended to be suspended in the air, his work evokes space, timelessness and perpetual serenity.

Impressions of the City, honoring the work of native Chicagoan Marvin Young, pulses with the energy of a metropolis. Young recreates the cityscape of his youth and the people who inhabit his world. Then he supercharges them with life. Chicago walk-ups are bulked up, are exaggerated and seem to come alive as they lean slightly; as if they’re about to take motion. Cars and taxicabs crossing bridges catch the urgency of rush hour traffic and perfectly mirror its frenetic intensity. Look closely and you’ll notice one of the cars in the string is faced in the wrong direction. In another drawing, a bus has far too many seats. These puzzling touches add a humanizing element to his drawings that gives them new dimension and singes them with curiosity.

Untitled from Impressions of the City,  Marvin Young artist  -  M. Oldham photography

Young’s portraits of people are interesting, even provocative in their candor. One of them quite large, they’re like sketches intended as much to capture some universal inner resolve as they are to interpret a face. Perhaps it’s because his subjects have a certain knowing quality about them. A tolerant and dignified c’est la vie persona that makes them interesting and commanding of respect. Young rarely, perhaps never, provides titles to his works. Each one stands on its own, nameless. Via a video monitor on the exhibition floor, Young explains making this art is a hobby for him. Something that’s always given him inestimable pleasure simply by doing it. A feeling of that’s very similar to joy and gratification this artistic three-fer induces in its visitors.

Life is an Art: The Collection of Jan Petry

April 9, 2026 - March 21, 2027

Impressions of a City: Drawing by Marvin Young

April 9, 2026 – August 23, 2026

Drawing with Metal: Sculpture by Bill Brady

April 9, 2026 - October 4, 2026

Intuit Art Museum

756 N. Milwaukee Ave.

Chicago, IL  60642

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