On View
Not on viewObject number2000.3
Sheets of Rain
Artist
Gladys Nilsson
(American, 1940-)
Date1998
Mediumwatercolor and gouache on paper
Dimensionsimage: 51 1/2 × 33 1/2 in. (130.8 × 85.1 cm)
frame: 59 × 41 × 2 in. (149.9 × 104.1 × 5.1 cm)
frame: 59 × 41 × 2 in. (149.9 × 104.1 × 5.1 cm)
Credit LinePurchased in memory of Ethel Denton Groos
Exhibition History"Nilsson and Nutt: Et Too Whootus," Sangren Hall, WMU (Oct. 11 - Nov. 2, 1999); KIA (Oct. 16 - Dec. 12, 1999).
"Focus on New Acquisitions: 1998-2000," KIA Long Gallery (Feb. 9 - Aug. 11, 2001).
"Highlights of the KIA Permanent Collection, (purchased with Auction funds)," KIA Gallery 5 (Sept. 9 - Oct. 14, 2006).
"Warhol, Chihuly and Others: Showcasing New KIA Acquisitions," KIA (Dec. 8, 2007 - Jan. 27, 2008).
"Surrealish: The Absurd and Unexpected," KIA Galleries 2 & 5 (June 4 - September 11, 2022)
"EXPO Chicago 2023" Chicago, Navy Pier (April 11 - 14, 2023).
Label Text"“Surrealism also battled the social institutions—church, state, and family—that regulate the place of women within patriarchy. In offering some women their first locus for artistic and social resistance, it became the first modernist movement in which a group of women could explore female subjectivity and give form (however tentatively) to a feminine imaginary.”
— Whitney Chadwick, Women, Surrealism, and Self-representation
In the 1960s, Gladys Nilsson was a member of the Hairy Who artist group in Chicago. Like the Surrealists of the 1920s, the Hairy Who had a high representation of women in their collective, and they often depicted women as strong, larger than life characters. In Sheets of Rain, Nilsson's protagonist is so large she would exceed the size of the paper if she stood up straight. About her contorted figures Nilsson said, “I love to watch people. I collect postures, in my mind, when somebody doesn’t think that they’re onstage so to speak, when they’re slumped or moving in a strange or exaggerated manner.”
Sheets of Rain also plays on the Surrealist idea of visual puns with the rain being literal fabric sheets being pulled from the sky." [from the exhibition Surrealish: The Absurd and Unexpected, 2022]
