Background

Jim Nutt was born on November 28, 1938 in Pittsfield, Massachusetts, United States.

Education

Jim Nutt studied at a number of educational institutions, including the University of Pennsylvania, Washington University in St. Louis and the School of the Art Institute of Chicago.

Career

In 1964, Jim was appointed a youth instructor at the Hyde Park Art Center in Chicago. Over the following decade, Nutt and his wife Gladys Nilsson began exhibiting alongside a group of artists, that became known as "The Hairy Who". In 1969, the couple settled down in Sacramento, California, where Jim held the post of an assistant professor of art at Sacramento State College (present-day California State University).

In 1972, Jim Nutt represented the United States at the Venice Biennial and the following year, he took part in the São Paulo Art Biennial. In 1974, the artist held his first solo exhibition at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago.

A retrospective of Nutt's paintings, entitled "Jim Nutt: Coming Into Character", was held during the period from January 29, 2011 till May 29, 2011.

In recent decades, Jim focused on paintings and graphite drawings of women with large noses, painstakingly rendered in terms of pattern, surface and line quality. Currently, the artist lives and works in Chicago.

Achievements

• Jim Nutt is best known as a founding member of the "Chicago Imagists" (Hairy Who). His works are kept in the collections of numerous museums, including the Museum of Modern Art in New York, the Smithsonian American Art Museum in Washington, D.C., the Art Institute of Chicago, the High Museum of Art in Atlanta and others.

Works

More photos

• painting

  • Wiggly Woman

  • Miss T. Garmint (she pants a lot)

  • Cotton Mouth

  • Her Face Fits

  • Lippy

  • Hee-Man

  • Miss P. Willow

  • A He Haw

  • Running Mad

  • Pink Encounter

  • SMack, SMack

  • Summer Salt

  • Steping (sic) Off the Room

  • Wee Jim’s Black Eye

  • Goodbye, Have a Nice Journey!!

Views

Quotations: "I’ve never really been able to understand why anybody paints a still life, even though I enjoy looking at them. And when it comes to people, I would much rather look at a female face and lavish attention on it than a male face. I think that’s part of the reason it’s ended up being a singular thing."

Membership

Jim Nutt is a founding member of the Chicago surrealist art movement, known as the Chicago Imagists, or the Hairy Who.

Connections

Nutt married Gladys Nilsson, an artist, in July 1961. The following year, the couple gave birth to their son Claude.

child:

Claude Nutt

Wife:

Gladys Nilsson

References

• Jim Nutt: Coming Into Character
  2011
• Jim Nutt
  1994