The landmark survey 50 Paintings features works created within the last five years by 50 international artists, highlighting the artistic trends in practice today. With paintings by artists including Amy Sherald, Cinga Samson, GaHee Park, Nicole Eisenman, Cecily Brown, and Peter Barrickman, the exhibition celebrates the medium’s continued relevance and aesthetic range, and invites visitors to engage in close looking and formulate their own assessments of trends in contemporary painting.
The 50 works presented in the exhibition demonstrate myriad approaches to the medium. Painting—as a form, a language, a practice—is the focus, and the survey format underscores the many concepts and strategies present-day artists employ. 50 Paintings offers visitors 50 distinct opportunities to experience this traditional art form shaped by the imaginations of artists influencing the direction of painting today.
50 Paintings was co-curated by Margaret Andera, senior curator of contemporary art, and Michelle Grabner, artist, curator, and Crown Family Professor of Art and Chair of Painting and Drawing at The School of the Art Institute of Chicago.
Marina Adams
Peter Barrickman
Cecily Brown
Matt Connors
David Diao
Angela Dufresne
Torkwase Dyson
Thomas Eggerer
Nicole Eisenman
Rao Fu
Jorge Galindo
Maureen Gallace
April Gornik
Magalie Guérin
Raul Guerrero
Peter Halley
Josephine Halvorson
Hock E Aye Vi Edgar Heap of Birds
Mary Heilmann
Jacqueline Humphries
Xylor Jane
Yun-Fei Ji
Jennie C. Jones
Brad Kahlhamer
Judy Ledgerwood
Caitlin Lonegan
Tala Madani
Cameron Martin
Eddie Martinez
Rebecca Morris
Sarah Morris
Carmen Neely
Aliza Nisenbaum
Paul P.
GaHee Park
Ann Pibal
Fiona Rae
Cinga Samson
Amy Sherald
Amy Sillman
Pat Steir
Philip Taaffe
Jake Troyli
Tristan Unrau
Lesley Vance
Sophie von Hellermann
Charline von Heyl
Julia Wachtel
Dan Walsh
Lisa Yuskavage
Judy Ledgerwood (b. Indiana, 1959) is a painter whose canvases and wall painting installations confront the history of abstract painting with traditions in the decorative arts. Her compositions consist of motifs derived from symbolic shapes associated with Paleo and Neolithic Goddess cultures throughout Europe. The broader vocabulary of shapes is comprised of circles, quatrefoils, and seed-like shapes organized within triangles and chevrons that are womanly ciphers symbolic of feminine power.
Judy Ledgerwood received a BFA from the Art Academy of Cincinnati and a MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. She has held numerous solo exhibitions, such as at The Graham Foundation and Smart Museum of Art, Chicago, IL, Tracy Williams Ltd, New York, Barbara Davis Gallery, Houston, TX, Hausler Contemporary, Austria, and Rhona Hoffman Gallery, among many others. She is the recipient of several awards including The Richard H. Driehaus Foundation Award, an Artadia Award, a Tiffany Award in the Visual Arts, a National Endowment for the Arts Award, and an Illinois Art Council Award. Judy Ledgerwood's work is included in prominent public collections including the Art Institute of Chicago, IL, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, the Museum of Contemporary Art Los Angeles, the Milwaukee Museum of Art, the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, and the Kunstmuseum St. Gallen Switzerland, among others. In 2015, Ledgerwood was commissioned by the Embassy of the United States in Vientiane, Laos to create a monumental site-specific painting, and in 2018 she became the first Chicago-based artist to create an installation for the Art Institute's Bluhm Family Terrace.
On the cover: JUDY LEDGERWOOD
Yummy Yum, 2021
Oil on canvas
72 x 48 inches
Soure: Rhona Hoffman Gallery
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