Karl Wirsum
The Chicago-born artist Karl Wirsum, a member of the legendary Hairy Who art group, died on 6 May, aged 81. Spending most of his career in the Windy City, Wirsum became a beloved artist and professor of painting and drawing at the School of the Art Institute in Chicago, as evidenced by the outpouring of appreciation on social media from scores of former students and fans. “Karl was an artist of major consequence,” says James Rondeau, the president and director of the Art Institute of Chicago. “His visionary, imaginative, utterly original take on figuration both epitomized a Chicago school and registered in a national and international consciousness.”
More to the Picture
Portraits reveal many truths about the human condition â how we present ourselves to the world. Bey explores the dialogue between sitter and subject.
Dawoud Bey (b. 1953) is an International Center of Photography Infinity Award winner. He has received grants from The National Endowment for the Arts, the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation Fellowship and the MacArthur Fellowship (aka a âgenius grantâ) and has exhibited at the George Eastman House, the Walker Art Center, the Detroit Institute of Arts, the Birmingham Museum of Art, the Addison Gallery of American Art, the Indianapolis Museum of Art and many more. His latest show is
Master Minds, which debuts on Thursday, April 15. A MasterMind is a brilliant thinker with original ideas, explained Andrea McCafferty and Kat O Neill, The White Room Gallery Co-owners. Joe Stefanelli and Sasson Soffer are two world renowned artists who not only live up to that description but who have also shared a connection to East Hampton through Joe s studio paintings and Sasson s sculpture park.
The duo continued, Joe, originally from Philadelphia, was part of the New York School of abstract expressionists showing with Pollack and de Kooning. Sasson, originally from Baghdad, came to NY to study with sculptor Jose de Rivera and painter Mark Rothko. Sasson lived to 84, Joe to 96.