Philip Hanson was born in Chicago, Illinois, on January 8, 1943, and has lived and worked in Chicago. He developed his artistic practice within the city’s influential network of painters associated with the Chicago Imagist movement. His early work emerged in the late 1960s alongside artists connected with the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and the Hyde Park Art Center’s False Image exhibitions.
Hanson studied humanities at the University of Chicago, where he developed an interest in close reading and the interpretation of relationships among words. He subsequently spent one year studying architecture at the University of Illinois at Chicago before concentrating on art. He attended the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, where he received a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree in 1969.
Hanson began receiving recognition in 1968 and 1969 through his participation in the False Image exhibitions at Chicago’s Hyde Park Art Center. His work developed in connection with the Chicago Imagists while retaining a distinctive emphasis on romantic, sensual, dreamlike, and densely patterned imagery. He has worked primarily as a painter while also producing drawings and prints, including mezzotint, aquatint, etching, and hand-colored works. From 1973 to 2014 he taught painting and drawing at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. His later paintings frequently incorporate excerpts from poetry, particularly poems by Emily Dickinson and William Blake, translating verbal rhythm, tone, and symbolic imagery into pictorial compositions. His work has been presented in solo and group exhibitions in Chicago, New York, Los Angeles, London, São Paulo, and Zürich, including the 2014 Whitney Biennial.
Became recognized as one of the artists associated with the Chicago Imagist movement through the False Image exhibitions of 1968 and 1969.
Presented work in the 2014 Whitney Biennial.
Created paintings incorporating excerpts from Romantic-era poetry, including works based on poems by William Blake and Emily Dickinson.
(Acrylic painting held in the collection of the Smart Muse...)
1971(Collaborative offset lithograph by Philip Hanson, Roger B...)
1968(Oil painting inspired by Emily Dickinson’s poem “After gr...)
2013(Painting based on William Blake’s poem “A Divine Image”; ...)
2013Hanson was part of the group of artists associated with the Chicago Imagists and participated in the 1968 False Image exhibition with Roger Brown, Eleanor Dube, and Christina Ramberg. His work has also been connected with the artistic community of the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, where he studied and later taught.
