The Art Institute of Chicago, 2024
Purchase from the Art Institute Museum Shop.
Available to booksellers from Yale University Press.
Christina Ramberg (1946–1995) first gained renown for her acrylic-on-board paintings from the 1960s and 1970s that feature stylized fragments of female figures. Often associated with Chicago Imagism, she drew upon a wide range of popular and art historical sources to create works that are both highly polished and enigmatic. The first comprehensive consideration of the artist since her death, this study confirms her ongoing impact as it considers the full scope of her practice—from her intimate early scrapbooks and drawings to her late-career geometric abstractions—and features the first substantive discussion of her quiltmaking.
Essays from both scholars and artists situate Ramberg within her Chicago-based network of colleagues and approach her work from a variety of perspectives, including gender and sexual identity, disability studies, artistic craft, canon formation, and pedagogical practice. Featuring never-before-published diaries, sketchbooks, slides, and other ephemera, this lavishly illustrated volume provides an unprecedentedly inclusive picture of her lifelong fascination with patterns and formal variation.
Edited by Thea Liberty Nichols and Mark Pascale
With contributions by Anna Katz, Judith Russi Kirshner, Riva Lehrer, Thea Liberty Nichols, Mark Pascale, Ricky Swallow, and Lorri Gunn Wirsum
256 pages, 8 1/4 × 11 in.
255 color illus.
Hardcover $50 ($45 members)
ISBN: 978-0-300-275742