Phyllis Barbara Kind ( Cobin; 1933–2018) was an American

art dealer An art dealer is a person or company that buys and sells works of art, or acts as the intermediary between the buyers and sellers of art. An art dealer in contemporary art typically seeks out various artists to represent, and builds relationshi ...

active in Chicago and New York. She promoted the work of the

Chicago Imagists The Chicago Imagists are a group of representational artists associated with the School of the Art Institute of Chicago who exhibited at the Hyde Park Art Center in the late 1960s. Their work was known for grotesquerie, Surrealism and complete ind ...

and

outsider art Outsider art is art made by self-taught or supposedly naïve artists with typically little or no contact with the conventions of the art worlds. In many cases, their work is discovered only after their deaths. Often, outsider art illustrates e ...

ists.

Early life and family

Phyllis Kind was born Phyllis Barbara Cobin in

The Bronx The Bronx () is a borough of New York City, coextensive with Bronx County, in the state of New York. It is south of Westchester County; north and east of the New York City borough of Manhattan, across the Harlem River; and north of the New Y ...

New York City New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the List of United States cities by population, most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the L ...

on 1 April 1933 to Harold Cobin, a dentist, and Dorothy (Weintraub) Cobin. She was their only child. The family lived in

Brooklyn Brooklyn () is a borough of New York City, coextensive with Kings County, in the U.S. state of New York. Kings County is the most populous county in the State of New York, and the second-most densely populated county in the United States, be ...

as well as The Bronx. She and her mother also lived for about three years in

St. Petersburg, Florida St. Petersburg is a city in Pinellas County, Florida, United States. As of the 2020 census, the population was 258,308, making it the fifth-most populous city in Florida and the second-largest city in the Tampa Bay Area, after Tampa. It is the ...

while her father performed military service. She attended the

Bronx High School of Science The Bronx High School of Science, commonly called Bronx Science, is a public specialized high school in The Bronx in New York City. It is operated by the New York City Department of Education. Admission to Bronx Science involves passing the Spec ...

and the

University of Pennsylvania The University of Pennsylvania (also known as Penn or UPenn) is a private research university in Philadelphia. It is the fourth-oldest institution of higher education in the United States and is ranked among the highest-regarded universitie ...

, where she studied chemistry. Her studies included chemistry at the graduate level. She married Joshua Kind, whom she met at university, in 1956. The couple moved to New York City; Phyllis taught elementary school while Joshua pursued a PhD in Renaissance art at

Columbia University Columbia University (also known as Columbia, and officially as Columbia University in the City of New York) is a private research university in New York City. Established in 1754 as King's College on the grounds of Trinity Church in Manhatt ...

. Phyllis also studied

composition Composition or Compositions may refer to: Arts and literature *Composition (dance), practice and teaching of choreography *Composition (language), in literature and rhetoric, producing a work in spoken tradition and written discourse, to include v ...

at the

Mannes School of Music Mannes School of Music is a music conservatory in The New School, a private research university in New York City. In the fall of 2015, Mannes moved from its previous location on Manhattan's Upper West Side to join the rest of the New School cam ...

. They moved to Chicago in 1959; Joshua Kind taught at

Northwestern University Northwestern University is a private research university in Evanston, Illinois. Founded in 1851, Northwestern is the oldest chartered university in Illinois and is ranked among the most prestigious academic institutions in the world. Charte ...

and, from 1962, the

University of Chicago The University of Chicago (UChicago, Chicago, U of C, or UChi) is a private research university in Chicago, Illinois. Its main campus is located in Chicago's Hyde Park neighborhood. The University of Chicago is consistently ranked among the b ...

. Phyllis Kind received a master's degree in English literature from the University of Chicago. They had four children, Jonathan, Gabriel, Deborah, and Rachel. The couple divorced in the 1970s.

Career

Encouraged by her husband, Phyllis Kind opened a gallery in Chicago in 1967. Called Pro Grafica Arte, the gallery dealt in master prints and drawings. In 1975, she opened a gallery on Spring Street in New York's

SoHo Soho is an area of the City of Westminster, part of the West End of London. Originally a fashionable district for the aristocracy, it has been one of the main entertainment districts in the capital since the 19th century. The area was develop ...

district. The gallery moved to a larger, ground floor space on Greene Street in 1983. In 1998, Kind closed her Phyllis Kind Gallery in Chicago, located at 313 West Superior Street, in part as a result of the death of artist Roger Brown. For 25 years, Ron Jagger served as director of Phyllis Kind Gallery in New York.

Artists represented

Phyllis Kind became interested in the contemporary art scene of Chicago. She followed the work of a movement that, overall, was called the

. In fact the movement included three distinct subgroups: The Monster Roster;

The Hairy Who The Chicago Imagists are a group of representational artists associated with the School of the Art Institute of Chicago who exhibited at the Hyde Park Art Center in the late 1960s. Their work was known for grotesquerie, Surrealism and complete ind ...

; and the

. She gave some of the artists in the movement their first solo shows:

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 P ...

and

Gladys Nilsson Gladys M. Nilsson (born May 6, 1940) is an American artist, and one of the original Hairy Who Chicago Imagists, a group of representational artists active during the 1960s and 1970s. She is married to fellow-artist and Hairy Who member Jim N ...

in 1970 and Roger Brown in 1971. Among others shown in her Chicago gallery were Barbara Rossi,

Richard Hull Field Marshal Sir Richard Amyatt Hull, (7 May 1907 – 17 September 1989) was a senior British Army officer. He was the last Chief of the Imperial General Staff (CIGS), holding the post from 1961 to 1964, and the first Chief of the General Staf ...

Robert Lostutter Robert Lostutter (born 1939) is a Chicago-based artist. He was a member of the Chicago Imagists, a breakaway group of surrealist iconoclasts from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago who showed in the Hyde Park Art Center in 1969 and la ...

Ed Paschke Edward Francis Paschke (June 22, 1939 – November 25, 2004) was an American painter of Polish descent. His childhood interest in animation and cartoons, as well as his father's creativity in wood carving and construction, led him toward a caree ...

Paul Sierra Paul may refer to: *Paul (given name), a given name (includes a list of people with that name) *Paul (surname), a list of people People Christianity * Paul the Apostle (AD c.5–c.64/65), also known as Saul of Tarsus or Saint Paul, early Chri ...

Christina Ramberg Christina Ramberg (21 August 1946–1995) was an American painter associated with the Chicago Imagists, a group of representational artists who attended the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in the late 1960s. The Imagists took their cues from ...

Karl Wirsum Karl Wirsum (1939May 6, 2021) was an American artist. He was a member of the Chicago artistic group The Hairy Who, and helped set the foundation for Chicago's art scene in the 1970s. Although he was primarily a painter, he also worked with prin ...

, and

Joseph Yoakum Joseph Elmer Yoakum (c. February 22, 1891 – December 25, 1972) was an American self-taught painter. He was of African-American and possibly of Native American–descent, and was known for his landscape paintings in the outsider art-style. He ...

. She also introduced the work of

ists. She was the first American gallerist to show contemporary and outsider work together. In 1972, Phyllis Kind presented her first group show of outsider art, "The Artless Artist: Contemporary 'Naive Works." Over the years, Kind showed Chicago custodian

Henry Darger Henry Joseph Darger Jr. (; April 12, 1892 – April 13, 1973) was an American writer, novelist and artist who worked as a hospital custodian in Chicago, Illinois. He has become famous for his posthumously discovered 15,145-page fantasy novel ma ...

, Mexican artist

Martín Ramírez Martín Ramírez (January 30, 1895 – February 17, 1963) was a self-taught artist who spent most of his adult life institutionalized in California mental hospitals, diagnosed as a catatonic schizophrenic. He is considered by some to be one ...

(discovered by Nutt), and Europeans

Adolf Wölfli Adolf Wölfli (February 29, 1864 – November 6, 1930) (occasionally spelled Adolf Woelfli or Adolf Wolfli) was a Swiss artist who was one of the first artists to be associated with the Art Brut or outsider art label. Early life Wölfli was born ...

Augustin Lesage Augustin Lesage (August 9, 1876 – February 21, 1954) was a French coal miner who became a painter and artist through the help of what he considered to be spirit voices. His style utilizes patterns and symmetry on a large scale, often accompanied ...

, Carlo Zinelli. She promoted and marketed the work of Georgian

Howard Finster Howard Finster (December 2, 1916 – October 22, 2001) was an American artist and Baptist minister from Georgia. He claimed to be inspired by God to spread the gospel through the design of his swampy land into Paradise Garden, a folk art scul ...

. She was an advisor to Sanford L. Smith & Associates' annual

Outsider Art Fair The Outsider Art Fair or OAF is an international exhibition that features outsider artists who work in a variety of mediums. It is a biannual fair occurring in New York City and Paris, the former taking place in January and the latter in October. P ...

since its inception in 1992, and traditionally occupied the first booth on the show floor. In New York, she mounted the first solo show for the miniaturist Mark Greenwold in 1979. Phyllis Kind sought out artists of originality who exhibited what she called "the art of necessity," "making art not because they might want to but instead because they have to." Among those were

Alison Saar Alison Saar (born February 5, 1956) is a Los Angeles, California based sculptor, mixed-media, and installation artist. Her artwork focuses on the African diaspora and black female identity and is influenced by African, Caribbean, and Latin Ameri ...

Robert Colescott Robert H. Colescott (August 26, 1925 – June 4, 2009) was an American painter. He is known for satirical genre and crowd subjects, often conveying his exuberant, comical, or bitter reflections on being African American. He studied with Fernand L ...

, William Copley, and Gillian Jagger. In her

Soho Soho is an area of the City of Westminster, part of the West End of London. Originally a fashionable district for the aristocracy, it has been one of the main entertainment districts in the capital since the 19th century. The area was develop ...

gallery, Kind also showcased the work of

Dan Keplinger Artist Dan Keplinger (born 19 January 1973) was featured in the Academy Awards, Oscar-winning documentary short, ''King Gimp''. Born with cerebral palsy, he lives in Towson, Maryland, where he continues to paint. Education After attending a schoo ...

, an artist with

cerebral palsy Cerebral palsy (CP) is a group of movement disorders that appear in early childhood. Signs and symptoms vary among people and over time, but include poor coordination, stiff muscles, weak muscles, and tremors. There may be problems with sensa ...

, who was the subject of the 1999

Oscar Oscar, OSCAR, or The Oscar may refer to: People * Oscar (given name), an Irish- and English-language name also used in other languages; the article includes the names Oskar, Oskari, Oszkár, Óscar, and other forms. * Oscar (Irish mythology), ...

-winning short documentary

King Gimp ''King Gimp'' is a 1999 documentary that was awarded the 2000 Academy Awards, Oscar for following the life of zacky dehalvi Academy Award for Best Documentary (Short Subject), Best Short Subject Documentary and 2000 Peabody Award.Chelsea Chelsea or Chelsey may refer to: Places Australia * Chelsea, Victoria Canada * Chelsea, Nova Scotia * Chelsea, Quebec United Kingdom * Chelsea, London, an area of London, bounded to the south by the River Thames ** Chelsea (UK Parliament consti ...

district that she had occupied since 2006. Kind died in

San Francisco, California San Francisco (; Spanish for " Saint Francis"), officially the City and County of San Francisco, is the commercial, financial, and cultural center of Northern California. The city proper is the fourth most populous in California and 17th ...

on September 28, 2018, aged 85, from respiratory failure. The 2019 Outsider Art Fair featured a space curated by Edward M. Gómez as a memorial to Phyllis Kind.

References

External links

Phyllis Kind Gallery

Video of Kind
telling the story of opening her first gallery in Chicago

with Rachel Sherman

by

Jerry Saltz Jerry Saltz (born February 19, 1951, in Chicago, Illinois) is an American art critic. Since 2006, he has been senior art critic and columnist for '' New York'' magazine. Formerly the senior art critic for ''The Village Voice'', he received the Pu ...

Gallery of images
of Kind, artists, art {{DEFAULTSORT:Kind, Phyllis 1933 births 2018 deaths People from the Bronx People from Manhattan American art dealers Women art dealers The Bronx High School of Science alumni University of Pennsylvania alumni