Early Abstract and Modernist Painting

Ed Paschke (1939–2004)

Topcat Boy, 1970

Acrylic on canvas, 71 x 51 in. (180.3 x 129.5 cm). Terra Foundation for American Art, Daniel J. Terra Art Acquisition Endowment Fund, 2017.3

Born in Chicago in 1939, Ed Paschke studied at the School of the Art Institute in the 1960s while working as a commercial artist and experimenting with collage and film. Upon his exposure to Pop Art he began to incorporate images borrowed directly from popular print media into his work. As evidenced in his 1970 painting, Topcat Boy, Paschke’s interest in cartoons, animation, posters, and tattoo art provided diverse source material for his colorful, playful, and often out-landish imagery. Paschke drew on his experiences in the sleazy nightclubs and wrestling venues of Chicago, making their subcultures subjects of his Pop informed art. He carefully recreated the look and feel of various media and often manipulated his source materials—adding a woman’s face to the body of a doll, or hockey gloves and a Mexican lucha libre mask to the figure of the top-hatted man in Topcat Boy—to layer his canvases with a multitude of textures and psychedelic colors that enhance his sensational subjects.

Learn more about this painting on the Terra Foundation website.

Early Abstract and Modernist Painting

Joseph Stella (1877–1946)

Telegraph Poles with Buildings, 1917

Max Weber (1881–1961)

Construction, 1915

Patrick Henry Bruce (1881–1936)

Peinture, 1917–18

Marsden Hartley (1877–1943)

Painting No. 50, 1914–15

Arthur Dove (1880–1946)

Nature Symbolized #3: Steeple and Trees, 1911–12

Arthur Dove (1880–1946)

Sails, 1911–12

Charles Demuth (1883–1935)

Welcome to Our City, 1921

Yasuo Kuniyoshi (1880–1953)

Boy with Cow, 1921

Stuart Davis (1892–1964)

Super Table, 1925

Helen Torr (1886–1967)

Purple and Green Leaves, 1927

Arthur Dove (1880–1946)

Boat Going through Inlet, c. 1929

John Graham (1881–1961)

The Green Chair, 1928

John Storrs (1885–1956)

Politics, 1931

Ernest Lawson (1873–1939)

Brooklyn Bridge, 1917–20

John Marin (1870–1953)

Sailboat, Brooklyn Bridge, New York Skyline, 1934

Georgia O'Keeffe (1887–1986)

Red Amaryllis, 1937

Albert Eugene Gallatin (1881–1952)

Room Space, 1937–38

Milton Avery (1885–1965)

Adolescence, 1947

George Tooker (1920–2011)

Highway, 1953

Ed Paschke (1939–2004)

Topcat Boy, 1970

Beauford Delaney (1901–1979)

Untitled (Village Street Scene), 1948

Philip Evergood (1901–1973)

Passing Show, 1951

Jamie Wyeth (b. 1946)

Kalounna in Frogtown, 1986