Early Abstract and Modernist Painting
Ed Paschke (1939–2004)
Topcat Boy, 1970
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.
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