In Murder Mystery, a reader sits in bed with his head buried in a book, captivated by a presumably gruesome, suspenseful tale. The leisurely pursuit of reading, like the movies, was a popular form of release in the mid-20th century—one that activated the imagination through the vivid arrangement of words rather than images. Chicagoan Margo Hoff created a cocoon-like world—the reader’s domestic space rendered in allover decoration of finely lined patterns and blocks of color. Hoff’s interest in abstraction is visible in these compositional details and she would turn more fully to a nonobjective vocabulary later in her career.
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.
“Artists of Chicago Open 50th Local Annual—Split $3,475 Purse,” Art Digest 20, 14 (Apr. 15, 1946), 8 (ill.).
“North Side Artists Win Awards,” Chicago Daily Tribune (Mar. 31, 1946), N4.
“The Chicago Irregulars,” Art News 45, 2 (Apr. 1946), 19 (ill.).
Art Institute of Chicago, Fiftieth Annual Exhibition: Artists of Chicago and Vicinity, Mar. 28–May 12, 1946, cat. 79, pl. 1.
Andover, MA, Addison Gallery of American Art, Phillips Academy, Prize Winners: 1945–46, Sept. 13–Oct. 21, 1946, n.p.
New York, Grand Central Art Galleries, Critics’ Show, Dec. 10–28, 1946, no cat.
New York, Downtown Gallery, Artists of Chicago, Oct. 18–Nov. 15, 1954, cat. 14; Chicago, 1020 Art Center, Oct. 18–Nov. 15.
Chicago, Fairweather–Hardin Gallery, Magnificent Mile Art Festival, Oct. 1955.
Lake Forest, Ill., Durand Art Institute, Lake Forest College, A Century of American Painting: Masterpieces Loaned by the Art Institute of Chicago, June 10–16, 1957, cat. 34.
Art Institute of Chicago, Art in Illinois: In Honor of the Illinois Sesquicentennial, June 15–Sept. 8, 1968 (no cat.).
Chicago, Museum of Contemporary Art, Art in Chicago: 1945–1995, Nov. 16, 1996–Mar. 23, 1997.
Art Institute of Chicago, Homegrown: The School of the Art Institute in the Permanent Collection, Oct. 17, 2015–Feb. 14, 2016.
Margo Hoff (1912–2008), Chicago, 1945; sold to the Art Institute of Chicago, 1946.
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