Nicolas Kalmakoff
" In 1955, a Russian émigré died alone, unknown and in poverty at the hôpital de Lagny to the north of Paris. After leading a hermit's existence in his small room at the hotel de la Rochefoucault in Paris, this former Russian aristocrat had created a fascinating body of work which, deemed eccentric and worthless, was locked away in storage and forgotten.

Throughout his solitary life, the artist had painted works that reflected his various obsessions with martyrdom, asceticism, decadence, spirituality and sexuality. Executed in a style marked by the Russian art nouveau, his imagery nevertheless transcended this movement, bearing undeniable traces of demented vision, indeed, genius.

Only in 1962 did some of his works come to light when Bertrand Collin du Bocage and Georges Martin du Nord discovered forty canvases in the Marché aux Puces, a large flea market to the north of Paris. All the works in this unusual collection were signed with a stylized 'K' monogram.

The Hungarian merchant who sold the lot to them included with it a poster of an exhibition held in Galerie Le Roy, Brussels, in 1924. Here, for the first time, the full name of the mysterious 'K' was revealed - Nicolas Kalmakoff."

Quote taken from here.

I really liked this drawing of war that shows a cannon designed like a lurching spider beast with dozens of small cannon ball creatures waiting to be shot into the air. This drawing of Satan is one of the most horrifying pictures I've discovered all year. The bizarre bear like ears on the sludge like demons, the vacant glowing eyes, absolutely horrifying.

Jim Nutt and the rest of the Hairy Who




















"Jim Nutt is a figurative artist associated with the Chicago Imagists, most specifically with the second generation of artists who called themselves The Hairy Who. The themes and styles of these artists favored fantasy, caricature and political commentary—in visual satires of the foibles of celebrity, mass media, and political ambition. Nutt, like other colleagues in the group—Edward Paschke and Roger Brown—studied at The School of The Art Institute of Chicago. In his expressionist distortion of form and Surrealist improbability, Nutt's art, in keeping with Chicago Imagism, also reflects the Windy City's history of private collecting, which during mid-century and later was marked by an attraction to Surrealism and the expressionist traditions."
Quote taken from here.

This gallery linked in the picture above has a small selection of Jim Nutt artwork.
2 drawings and a painting
1 painting
Double click the picture in this link to see a larger example of one of Nutt's paintings.
Click here to read a short article on Jim Nutt.

Unfortunately there is very little work by Jim Nutt online, but there is even less of the remaining members of the Hairy Who, Art Green, James Falconer and Suellen Rocca.

Click the following links to see a few examples of the other Hairy Who members whose style and imagery fit in alongside the previous 3 mentioned artists.

Link 1 - One work by Art Green and one by Jim Nutt.
Link 2 - Dozens of works including all members of the Hairy Who as well as other Chicago Imagist artists like Roger Brown.

The Chicago Imagists which the Hairy Who were connected with were also known as the "Monster Roster".

Gladys Nilsson
One of the founders of the "Hairy Who" art group, Nilsson's imagery consistently displays oddly shaped humans performing various activities. One of the stranger and surreal aspects of Nilsson's works is the inclusion of miniature people along with the more normal sized characters. It's difficult to make out but at the bottom of the picture posted above is a parade of tiny characters walking towards the rightside of the composition.

2nd Gallery
3rd Gallery
4th Gallery
5th Gallery
2 Paintings
2 drawings
2 Etchings
Single painting
Single painting

Karl Wirsum
This week I'll be focusing on many of the artists attached to the Chicago based "Hairy Who" art group.

The Hairy Who were a collection of six artists who attended the Chicago Institute of Art. They had 5 exhibitions and published four "comic book" catalogues during the 60's.

This quote taken from here summarizes what the Hairy Who artists were all about.

"...funky and irreverent subject matter (often with sexual and/or violent overtones, with imaginative fantasies dealing with the figure under extreme physical or psychological stress), a predilection for narrative themes drawn from vernacular sources, a decided openness to influences from self-taught artists and from sources outside the mainstream of Western art history, a taste for garish and obsessively busy small-scale compositions driven by a concern for symmetry and a linear approach to the figure, surrealistic whimsy and ironic and caustic humor undercutting the 'serious' status of the art object, high-keyed color, scrupulous and fastidious craftspersonship tending toward the suppression of evidence of the experiential residue of the artist's hand, and iconic independence and idiosyncratic mannerism of the most manic sort."

Karl Wirsum's artwork contains a variety of characters resembling cartoon/ comic book characters abstracted into a strange mess of shapes and patterns. "Wirsum's imaginary creatures and super hero characters enact bizarre scenes. Figures from outer space perform domestic tasks such as mowing the lawn; space men happily orbit starry objects. His work exists in the buffer zone between real and imaginary, mundane domesticity and super hero powers, day-to-day existence and daydreams. " His influence is evident in much of the 80's comic art associated with RAW magazine.
There's an interesting article by Dan Nadel at www.comicsreporter.com that details who Karl Wirsum and The Hairy Who are.
This collection of photos taken from Wirsum's home displays much of his strange collections alongside his own artworks.

2nd Gallery
3rd Gallery
4th Gallery
5th Gallery
6th Gallery
Giant Wirsum painting on a building
Single Image
Single Image
Photo of a paper sculpture