The Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum

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The Museum will be closed to the public on November 15th and 16th for private events.

Cynthia Carlson

Cynthia Carlson received her BFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and MFA from Pratt. During the 1970s, she was a leading member of the Pattern and Decoration movement in New York. At that time Carlson was best known for her paintings, works on paper, and installations with allover surface details achieved with thickly painted twirls and squiggles applied with a pastry tool. Over the decades her work—which has included painting, installation, sculpture, artist’s books, public art, and drawing—has varied stylistically but her embrace of color, pattern, and humor have remained constant.

Carlson names Chicago Imagism as an early influencer. This is best evidenced in the oil painting Untitled Inscape #1, which was made within a few years of graduating from Pratt. Reacting against Minimalism, Carlson embraced surrealism, creating a theatrical “interior landscape” that is “spatially unclear.” It was one of two paintings from the series included in Twenty Six Contemporary Women Artists.

Explore the Conflicts from 2017, on view in the Vestibule, is one in a recent series for which Carlson initially painted over canvases recycled from an earlier body of work and then combined them into shaped paintings. Over time, she began to purchase canvases of different sizes to create an array of “eccentric shapes.” Their exuberant palettes charge the surface with animated rhythms.

Images

Muted abstract painting
Colorful abstract painting
Catalogue page with art by Cynthia Carlson

Audio

Hear artist Cynthia Carlson describe her works, "Untitled Inscape #1," (1970) and "Explore the Conflicts," (2017), in the Aldrich exhibition, 52 Artists: A Feminist Milestone.

Related Exhibitions

Pindell
April 18, 1971, to June 13, 1971 | Old Hundred

Twenty Six Contemporary Women Artists
Install view of a gallery with a figurative sculpture to the left with a projection in the background, a soft sculpture hung on the wall at center and painting.
June 6, 2022 to January 8, 2023 | Lobby, Leir Gallery, Screening Room, Ramp, Project Space, Balcony, South Gallery, Sound Gallery, Opatrny Gallery

52 Artists: A Feminist Milestone

Top image: Cynthia Carlson, Explore the Conflicts, 2017. Courtesy of the artist and Richard Saltoun Gallery, London. Photo: Jason Mandella