Jim Nutt

James T. Nutt (born November 28, 1938) is an American artist who was a founding member of the Chicago surrealist art movement known as the Chicago Imagists, or the Hairy Who. Though his work is inspired by the same pop culture that inspired Pop Art, journalist Web Behrens says Nutt's "paintings, particularly his later works, are more accomplished than those of the more celebrated Andy Warhol and Roy Lichtenstein." Nutt attended the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, in Chicago, Illinois. He is married to fellow-artist and Hairy Who member Gladys Nilsson.

Early life

Jim Nutt was born in 1938 in Pittsfield, Massachusetts. He attended college at the University of Kansas, then the University of Pennsylvania, then Washington University in St. Louis, then the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, where he met his future wife, fellow artist Gladys Nilsson.

Art career 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. 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. In that same year Nutt and Nilsson moved to Sacramento, California, where he was an assistant professor of art at Sacramento State College.

Jim Nutt exhibited a retrospective of his paintings, "Jim Nutt: Coming Into Character" at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago from January 29 - May 29, 2011.

In 2022, Venus Over Manhattan exhibited "Jim Nutt: Portraits," showcasing rarely seen paintings and works on paper. This marked the first significant display of Nutt's work in New York in over a decade and his first solo gallery exhibition in the United States since the MCA Chicago's 2011 retrospective.

Family life In 1960, while attending the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, he met fellow student Gladys Nilsson. Nutt and Nilsson married in July 1961 in a chapel on the grounds of Northwestern University, and their son Claude was born in 1962.