Gladys Nilsson’s first major retrospective, titled “Gleefully Askew,” opens at the Crocker Art Museum in Sacramento on July 19, highlighting a career that spans more than six decades of lively, off‑kilter figurative work.
From Chicago’s Hairy Who to a Solo Spotlight
Nilsson, now 86, first gained notice in the late 1960s as a member of the Hairy Who, a six‑artist offshoot of the Chicago Imagists. The group’s shows, though brief, positioned them as the “hot” counterpart to New York’s Pop movement. Nilsson and her husband, fellow artist Jim Nutt, met while studying at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 1960 and have lived together in Wilmette since 1976.
The new exhibition assembles more than 100 pieces, ranging from early watercolors and acrylic paintings to later collages and drawings. Curated by Francesca Wilmott, who first discovered Nilsson’s work when she was a graduate student at SAIC, the show travels after Sacramento to the Madison Museum of Contemporary Art in Wisconsin.
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Artistic Voice and Personal Lens
Nilsson’s signature figures—brightly colored, with distorted proportions and a sense of “merry chaos”—appear in everyday scenes that quickly turn into micro‑dramas. Although she does not label them self‑portraits, she acknowledges that the characters echo her own humor and perspective as a woman and mother, evolving from sprightly forms to slightly drooping silhouettes as she ages.
In planning the retrospective, Nilsson said she used herself as a reference point to track how the women in her work have changed over the years. “It’s big,” she said, eyes widening as she described the scale of the show.
Contextual Roots and Ongoing Impact
Born in May 1940 to Swedish immigrants on Chicago’s North Side, Nilsson grew up reading Nancy Drew and Little Lulu comics, influences that surface in the playful hairstyles of her early “Gigantica” paintings. Her father worked in a small‑appliance factory; her mother expected a conventional career, but Nilsson pursued art school with her parents’ reluctant support.
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She recalls that bias against women artists was more about the medium—watercolor, paper, humor—than about gender itself. “Watercolor? So not serious,” she said, noting that the perception of “funny” art as unserious also contributed to the challenges she faced.
Since 2014 Nilsson has shown with Garth Greenan Gallery in New York, and in recent years she has produced large wall drawings for institutions such as the Colby Museum of Art, the Art Institute of Chicago, and the Menil Drawing Institute. In 2024 she received the Anonymous Was a Woman award, further cementing her status as a trailblazer.
Preparing the Retrospective
One of Wilmott’s goals with this retrospective is to broaden our understanding of Nilsson beyond just her Chicago context. “I wanted to assert her as an internationally important artist who can transcend all of these different categories that are often placed upon her work as a watercolorist, or for making purely feminine art,” Wilmott said.
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The Crocker setting is historically resonant; Nilsson exhibited there in 1969 while living in Sacramento during Nutt’s tenure at the state university, a period she describes as “transformative.”
Among the pieces on view is “Big Birthday Gladys” (2010), a large‑scale canvas created for her 70th birthday. The painting is crowded with characters juggling candles and cakes, and includes a tiny photograph of Nilsson at age three tucked into the lower right corner. “It’s the one that, of course, a lot of people want, but I say it’s mine,” she told me, noting that the work will travel to the Crocker for the duration of the show.
“Gleefully Askow: A Gladys Nilsson Retrospective” will remain on view at the Crocker until November 29, 2026, offering visitors a chance to see the breadth of an artist who has consistently turned personal observation into a lively, unconventional visual language.
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