| Robert Lostutter |
(Emporia, Kansas, 1939- )
Robert Lostutter attended the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and became influenced
by John Rogers Cox, an academic painter who stressed traditional
drawing and painting techniques. While there, he became associated with a group
of artists known as the Chicago Imagists. This group's work tended
towards incredibly intricate, detailed, surreal images full of whimsy
and psychological tension. Following a trip to Mexico in the 1970's,
Lostutter began a project that would come to dominate his artistic
production -- making drawings and paintings of strange hybrid bird-men
with exotic, multicolored plumage fused into their faces and beaks
and leaves growing from their bodies. Critics have speculated that
these strange creatures represent a metamorphosis of the human being
into an eroticized ornithological world of sub-surface sexuality.
This drawing is a preparatory sketch showing the beginnings of the
growth of a beak, and the early stages of a colored mask growing
on the man's face. |
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The Color of Waterlilies II (Purple), 1999
Graphite on paper, 4 1/2 x 5 1/2 in. |
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