Elmhurst University holds one of the largest collections of pieces by the Chicago Imagist movement, and showcases artists including Christina Ramberg and Jim Nutt. The A.C. Buehler Library is proud to serve as the main gallery for these works.
Green Hat HFP3, 2009 by Susan Frankel
The collection dates to 1971, when Elmhurst received federal funding to purchase art for the newly built A.C. Buehler Library. The University focused its collection on works by a group of emerging and affordable Chicago artists—a group that would later be known as the Chicago Imagists.
The Chicago Imagists were a group of highly talented and irreverent artists who emerged in Chicago in the 1950s and ’60s.
The group got its start in 1966, when six recent graduates of the School of the Art Institute of Chicago held a groundbreaking exhibit at the Hyde Park Art Center on Chicago’s South Side. Calling themselves the Hairy Who, the artists thumbed their noses at the art establishment, producing works that were outrageous, aggressive, humorous and scatological.
Suellen Rocca was a trailblazing artist, a longtime educator in the Elmhurst College art department, and a passionate advocate for the College’s art collection who shared its works with museums and galleries across the country and around the world.
View some of the pieces online
