Ann Toebbe

Ann Toebbe (born 1974) is an American contemporary artist who has had solo exhibitions at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago, The Saatchi Gallery (London, UK), Steven Zevitas Gallery (Boston, MA, represented), Monya Rowe Gallery (New York City), and Tibor de Nagy Gallery (New York City, represented). Based in Chicago, she is best known for creating meticulously designed paintings and collages that depict the interiors of domestic life. In 2015, Vulture magazine art critic Jerry Saltz named one of Toebbe's exhibitions one of the year's 10 best. Toebbe has been featured in articles in Artforum, The New York Times, NY Magazine, The Boston Globe, The Chicago Tribune, Art in America, and Hyperallergic, among others. Early life and education

Toebbe grew up in Cincinnati and attended Seton High School, an all girls Catholic school. She earned a BFA in sculpture from the Cleveland Institute of Art in 1997. In 1994 and 1995 she attended the Chautauqua School of Art summer residency and in 1995 participated in Parsons School of Design's NY Studio program. After graduation she worked for five years as an art handler in galleries and museums, living in Brooklyn, New York. Toebbe presented three large-scale (100" x 75") collages. All three collages from the exhibition were acquired by the Saatchi Collection in London.

In 2013, Toebbe had a solo exhibition, The Inheritance, at Ebersmoore Gallery in Chicago. Simultaneously, Toebbe's cut-paper collages of kitchens and dining rooms were displayed as part of the exhibition, “Open House: Art About Home,” at the Elmhurst Art Museum in Elmhurst, Illinois.

In 2014, Toebbe produced recollections of the childhood bedroom and Veracruz home of her children's babysitter for a solo exhibition titled Shared at Steven Zevitas Gallery in Boston. The title Shared played on the theme of working-class families, like Toebbe's, who lived in small homes where children shared bedrooms.

In 2015, Toebbe's work was displayed at the Monya Rowe Gallery in New York City. The exhibition title Remarried included gouache and cut paper paintings titled, “Second Wife” and “First Wife”, “Second Marriage Madison Park” and Second Marriage East View Park”. The gallery had relocated to St. Augustine, FL. In November Toebbe participated in a two-person exhibition with the painter Sarah McEneaney at Zevitas Marcus Gallery in Los Angeles.

In 2018 Toebbe's work was included in “In My Room: Artists Paint the Interior: 1950 – Now” at The Fralin Museum of Art at The University of Virginia, Charlottesville, VA.

In 2019, Toebbe had a solo exhibition, Friends and Rentals, at Tibor de Nagy Gallery in New York City. Toebbe worked from photos she saved from Facebook posts to construct interiors she had never visited. Included were two paintings about properties she had rented with her family on vacation. Toebbe also mounted a solo exhibition, Swing State, at Sarah Lawrence College in Bronxville, NY. The work in the exhibition acted as a portrait of the artist as a middle aged woman and a Midwesterner.

Description of work

Toebbe's collages consist of pieces of colored paper that are cut up and recreate the interiors of homes that she and others around her have inhabited.

In January 2015, New York Times art critic Roberta Smith situated Toebbe's work as part of what she called “the stay-at-home intimist tradition that begins with Édouard Vuillard’s Parisian interiors.”