Fractured and fetishized. Cropped and contained. Patterned and precise.
Christina Ramberg’s figurative images share all those qualities and more, a coolly elegant, slyly provocative and enduringly contemporary body of work that continues to influence other artists today. Although she is internationally known, as exemplified by a 2019-20 group show in Berlin subtitled “Christina Ramberg in Dialogue,” and much respected by other artists, the Chicago artist nonetheless remains underappreciated. That’s where “Christina Ramberg: A Retrospective,” a stunning, much-deserved exhibition that opens April 20 at the Art Institute of Chicago, comes in.
In preparation for more than three years, it is the largest and most comprehensive exhibition ever devoted to her work. The clear-eyed survey contains more than 100 paintings, quilts, drawings and other objects — about two-thirds of all the work she created in a life that was tragically shortened by an 1989 diagnosis of Pick’s disease or frontotemporal dementia (the same illness that and former ). The illness curtailed her artistic output and ultimately led to her death in 1995 at age 49.
While some of the selections come from museums, including notable institutions like New York’s Museum of Modern Art and the Art Institute’s own collection, most of the loans are from artists and private collectors across the country. Ramberg, who earned her bachelor’s and master’s of fine arts degrees from the School of the Art Inst.
