Gladys Nilsson

Gladys M. Nilsson (born May 6, 1940) is an American artist, and one of the original Hairy Who Chicago Imagists, a group of representational artists active during the 1960s and 1970s. She is married to fellow-artist and Hairy Who member Jim Nutt.

Biography Gladys Nilsson was born to Swedish immigrant parents. She grew up on the north side of Chicago and attended Lake View High School, while also attending extracurricular drawing classes. Nilsson later attended the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, where she met her future husband, fellow student Jim Nutt.

In 1963, Nilsson and Nutt were introduced to School of the Art Institute of Chicago art history professor Whitney Halstead, who became a teacher, mentor, and friend.

Artistic style Gladys Nilsson's influences were far ranging and included German Expressionism, 15th Century Italian painting, Egyptian tomb murals, Cubism, and, more specifically, Whitney Halstead, Kathleen Blackshear, James Ensor, George Grosz, Paul Klee, Georges Seurat, John Marin, and Charles Burchfield. The result was a style that bordered on surrealism and pop, fantasy and cartoon. She took the human figure as her main subject, magnifying, multiplying, and distorting these figures as she saw fit.

According to the Chicago Tribune, her paintings "set forth a surreal mixture of fantasy and domesticity in a continuous parade of chaotic images."

The Hairy Who Years In 1964, Jim Nutt and Gladys Nilsson began to teach children's classes at the Hyde Park Art Center in Chicago. The pair and James Falconer approached the center's exhibitions director, Don Baum, with the idea of a group show consisting of the three of them and Art Green and Suellen Rocca. Baum agreed, and also suggested they include Karl Wirsum. There were exhibitions at the Hyde Park Art Center in 1966, 1967, 1968, and 1969. The 1968 exhibition traveled to the San Francisco Art Institute, and the last show, in 1969, traveled to the Corcoran Gallery of Art in Washington, DC. The same year, the couple moved to Sacramento, California, where Nutt worked as an assistant professor of art at Sacramento State College.

She had a retrospective of her art in the spring of 2010 at the Ukrainian Institute of Modern Art in Chicago.

In 2010, Philadelphia art collector, Linda Lee Alter, donated her 500-work Art by Women Collection to the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts. Alter’s original intention for the collection was to one day be provided to a public institution. The collection includes works of Gladys Nilsson alongside Louise Bourgeois, Elizabeth Catlett, Viola Frey, Alice Neel, Louise Nevelson, Faith Ringgold, and other great women artists. In a 2012-13 exhibition, the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts presented 200 works of Alter’s collection, including four works by Nilsson. Her watercolor on paper, Beset by Small Problems, 1990; hand colored etching on paper, The String Game, 1993; acrylic & collage on canvas & metal hoop, Blue Vue, 1997; and watercolor and gouache on paper, Looking Back, 1999.

Nilssons’ Rounding Rosie's Ring: Dance, You Fools, Dance, 2024 was incorporated into the “Alive & Kicking” exhibition alongside contemporary artists, Thomas Laningan-Schmidt and Catalina Schliebener Muñoz. The mural was a four-sided wall installation made on-site in the gallery using mediums of charcoal, chalk, graphite, marker, and wall paint. The 2024 exhibition was held at the Joan Dignam Schmaltz Gallery of Art at the Paul J. Schupf Art Center in downtown Waterville, Maine.

Caked: a plein air romp with bakery goods, 2025, is permanently installed in gallery 286 at the Art Institute of Chicago. The mural is a creative celebration of Nilsson’s 85th birthday and was created with the assistance of Megann Lawlor, 2024–25 McMullan Arts Leadership Intern. A look into her creative process was captured in a brief interview as she shared she hopes people view the mural and “just smile.”

Exhibitions

Selected solo exhibitions

1971 Gladys Nilsson, Art Gallery, Chico State College, Chico, California Gladys Nilsson, Candy Store Gallery, Folsom, California

1973 Gladys Nilsson, Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, April 12–May 13

1979 Gladys Nilsson, Portland Center for the Visual Arts, Oregon, January 18–February 18

1979–1980 Gladys Nilsson: Survey of Works on Paper, 1967–1979, Fine Arts Gallery, Wake Forest University, Winston-Salem, North Carolina, September 17–October 17, 1979; Art Gallery, Corpus Christi State University, Texas, January 8–31, 1980; Wustum Museum of Fine Arts, Racine, Wisconsin, February 17–March 23, 1980

1984 Gladys Nilsson: Greatest Hits from Chicago, Selected Works 1967–1984, Randolph Street Gallery, Chicago, May 5–June 23 Gladys Nilsson, Candy Store Gallery, Folsom, California, November

1993 Sum Daze: Hand-Colored Etchings by Gladys Nilsson, Dime Museum, Chicago, September 10–October 4

1996 Gladys Nilsson, Crocker Art Museum, Sacramento, California, March–April

2000 Gladys Nilsson, Rosemont College, Rosemont, Pennsylvania, February 3–March 3

2003 Gladys Nilsson, Adrian College, Adrian, Michigan, January 6–25 Gladys Nilsson, University Art Gallery, Saginaw Valley State University, University Center, Michigan, October 3–29

2006 Gladys Nilsson, Tarble Art Center, Eastern Illinois University, Charleston, January 21–February 26

2010 Gladys Nilsson: Works from 1966–2010, Ukrainian Institute of Modern Art, Chicago, April 9–May 23 2026

Gleefully Askew: A Gladys Nilsson Retrospective, Crocker Art Museum, Sacramento, July 19--November 29

Collections

Source: Art Institute of Chicago Brauer Museum of Art, Valparaiso University, Indiana Kresge Art Museum, Michigan State University, Lansing Los Angeles County Museum of Art Madison Museum of Contemporary Art, Wisconsin Maier Museum of Art at Randolph College, Lynchburg, Virginia Mary and Leigh Block Museum of Art, Northwestern University, Evanston, Illinois Midwest Museum of American Art, Elkhart, Indiana Milwaukee Art Museum Morgan Library, New York Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago Museum of Modern Art, New York Museum Moderner Kunst, Vienna New Orleans Museum of Art Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, Philadelphia Philadelphia Museum of Art Phoenix Art Museum Roger Brown Study Collection, School of the Art Institute of Chicago Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington, DC Whitney Museum of American Art, New York Yale University Art Gallery, New Haven, Connecticut