Nancy Chunn

Nancy Chunn is an American artist (born 1941) based in New York, New York. Known for her commitment to geopolitical issues, Chunn’s work includes a diverse range of paintings.

Biography Nancy Chunn was born in Los Angeles, California and received her Bachelor of Fine Arts in 1969, from the California Institute of the Arts, Santa Clarita, California. She began her career in Southern California before moving to New York in the late 1970s, where she currently lives and works.

A self-proclaimed “political junkie,” she achieved critical success with her early map like paintings of tyrannized nations and has continued her commitment to documenting world events and the repeating cycle of history in the paintings she has produced since the early 1980s.

She is largely recognized for the yearlong Front Pages project, where she applied images and text to provide commentary on every cover page of The New York Times from January 1 to December 31, 1996. In 1997, Rizzoli produced a hardcover book illustrating each of the project’s works.

Chunn’s most recent painting series, Chicken Little and the Culture of Fear, on which she has worked since 2004, focuses on the terrorism crisis in America and the panic it perpetuates. This theme was similarly depicted in her 9/11 piece from 2002-2004. Following her 1999-2001 News Stories series of large-scale paintings based on news-breaking stories, Chunn was credited with inventing “a form of history painting for our time.”

A September 2004 Art Price article maintains that “during her 25-year career, Nancy Chunn’s consistent subject matter and stylistic diversity conveys a full maturity in her artistic vision. Her works clearly display integration of unique painting techniques, and, through a delicate, modern aesthetic, reveal a complex social conscience, which one can only rarely experience today.”

Awards Chunn was a 2009 Guggenheim Fellow. She was named Honoree of the fall 2007 Jennifer Howard Coleman Distinguished Lectureship and Residency at Otis College of Art and Design. In 2005, Chunn received an Anonymous Was A Woman Award. She has also twice received a Fellowship Award in Painting from the National Endowment for the Arts, namely in 1985 and 1995. Front Pages- Exhibition held at the Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C., in 1988. Includes entirety of the Front Pages Project and an Interview with the Artist, conducted by Gary Indiana. Chunn, Nancy, and Gary Indiana. Front Pages. New York: Rizzoli, 1997. Print. Nancy Chunn: Media Madness - Exhibition Catalogue for a solo show at Ben Maltz Gallery at Otis College of Art and Design in 2008. Chunn, Nancy, Parme P. Giuntini, Meg Linton, and Marco Nocella. Nancy Chunn: Media Madness. Los Angeles, CA: Ben Maltz Gallery, Otis College of Art andDesign, 2008. Print. The Apocalyptic Vision: Four New Images - Exhibition Catalogue for a group show at Galleri Bellman in 1983. Hunter, Sam. The Apocalyptic Vision: Four New Images : Paintings by Nancy Chunn, Peter Dean, Micheal Dvortcsak, Robert Morgan. New York: Galleri Bellman, 1983. Print. Exposures: Women & Their Art - Biography of many female artists, including Nancy Chunn. Brown, Betty A, and Arlene Raven. Exposures: Women & Their Art. Pasadena, Calif: NewSage Press, 1989. Print.

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