Chicago Imagists

The Monster Roster was a group of Chicago artists, several of whom served in World War II and were able to go to art school thanks to the G.I. Bill. They were given their name in 1959 by critic and Monster Roster member, Franz Schulze. The name was based on their existential, sometimes gruesome, semi-mystical figurative work. Many of them were mentored by Vera Berdich, an influential surrealist printmaker who taught at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. The group was recognized in a major exhibition at the Smart Museum of Art at University of Chicago, which examined its history and impact on the development of American art. The Monster Roster included: • Robert Barnes • Don Baum • Fred Berger • Cosmo Campoli • George Cohen • Dominick Di Meo • Leon Golub • Theodore Halkin • June Leaf • Arthur Lerner • Irving Petlin • Seymour Rosofsky • Franz Schulze • Nancy Spero • Evelyn Statsinger • H. C. Westermann ==The Hairy Who==

"Neither a movement nor a style, Hairy Who was simply the name six Chicago artists chose when they decided to join forces and exhibit together in the mid-1960s." The Hairy Who was a "group" made up of six School of the Art Institute graduates, mentored by Ray Yoshida and Whitney Halstead.: "Nonetheless, there is an important distinction to be made between The Chicago Imagist and Hairy Who, says Thea Liberty Nichols, the Researcher of Prints and Drawings at the AIC, who co-organized “Hairy Who? 1966-1969” with Mark Pascale, the Curator of Prints and Drawings and Ann Goldstein, the Deputy Director and Chair, and Curator of Modern and Contemporary Art. “The Hairy Who was an artist-designed, artist-named exhibition group while Chicago Imagism was a label was applied to a whole gaggle of artists by an outside critic,” Nichols says." The Hairy Who included: • Art Green • Gladys Nilsson • Jim Nutt • Jim Falconer • Suellen Rocca • Karl Wirsum ==The Chicago Imagists==

The Imagists were not a formal group, but rather a description of artists involved in shows curated by Baum in the mid-1960s and early 1970s. Several other artists, including Roger Brown, Ed Paschke, Barbara Rossi and Philip Hanson, are often incorrectly associated with the Hairy Who exhibitions, when in fact they showed at the Hyde Park Art Center between 1968-1971 in several other shows, such as "Non-Plussed Some", "False Image", "Chicago Antigua" and "Marriage Chicago Style". ==Distinction between Chicago Imagism and New York Pop Art==

Chicago private art dealer Karen Lennox said, "The Hairy Who sourced surrealism, Art Brut, and the comics. Pop art sourced the world of commercial advertising and popular illustration. One was very personal, the other anti-personal." ==Other artists==

Outside of Chicago, any Chicago artist whose work is figurative and quirky is often called an Imagist. Chicago artists who paint strange and figurative works, but are not Imagists, include: • Phyllis Bramson • Richard Hull • Paul Lamantia • Robert Lostutter • Hollis Sigler • Eleanor Spiess-Ferris In fact, Imagism as a style or school is elastic enough that abstract artists from Chicago working in an organic or surrealist-influenced style during Imagism's heyday, such as David Sharpe, Steven Urry, and Jordan Davies, have been described as "Abstract Imagists." == Legacy ==

The legacy of The Chicago Imagists is notably explored in Pentimenti Production's film, Hairy Who and the Chicago Imagists, directed by Chicago filmmaker Leslie Buchbinder. In 2025, the Tang Teaching Museum published 3-D Doings: The Imagist Object in Chicago Art, the catalog of an exhibit held there in 2018-209. "Sixties Surreal," hosted Sept 24, 2025–Jan 19, 2026 at the Whitney Museum of American Art, and described by the musueum as "an ambitious, scholarly reappraisal of American art from 1958 to 1972," included the work of six Chicago Imagists. ==See also==