Big School Picture; Little Paper Mural

Prints and Drawings

1992

Gladys Nilsson
American, born 1940

Attending the School of the Art Institute of Chicago (SAIC) in the early 1960s, Gladys Nilsson studied with and befriended the art history professor Whitney Halstead. Among the most celebrated watercolorists working today, Nilsson builds her compositions by applying thin layers of transparent wash, resulting in great depth and brilliant colors. This watercolor depicting crowds of students across multiple spaces was originally commissioned by SAIC to be used as an advertising poster. The work is filled with her typically dense groupings of figures, organized lyrically and playfully within the composition.

Status: Currently Off View
Department: Prints and Drawings

Artist: Gladys Nilsson
Title: Big School Picture; Little Paper Mural
Place: United States (Artist's nationality:)
Date Dates are not always precisely known, but the Art Institute strives to present this information as consistently and legibly as possible. Dates may be represented as a range that spans decades, centuries, dynasties, or periods and may include qualifiers such as c. (circa) or BCE.: 1992
Medium: Watercolor over graphite on off-white wove paper
Dimensions: 65.7 × 84 cm (25 7/8 × 33 1/8 in.)
Credit Line: Samuel T. Avery Endowment
Reference Number: 1992.181

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