Suellen Rocca (October 2, 1943 – March 26, 2020) was a Chicago artist, one of the original

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 ...

, a group in the 1960s and 1970s who turned to representational art. She exhibited with them at the

Hyde Park Art Center The Hyde Park Art Center (HPAC) is a visual arts organization and the oldest Alternative exhibition spaces, alternative exhibition space in the city of Chicago. Since 2006, HPAC has been located just north of Hyde Park Boulevard, at 5020 S.Cornell ...

from 1966 through 1969.Richard Vine, "Where the Wild Things Were", ''

Art in America ''Art in America'' is an illustrated monthly, international magazine concentrating on the contemporary art world in the United States, including profiles of artists and genres, updates about art movements, show reviews and event schedules. It i ...

'', May 1997, pp. 98–111. She was curator of the art collection and director of exhibitions at

Elmhurst College Elmhurst University is a private university in Elmhurst, Illinois. It has a tradition of service-oriented learning and an affiliation with the United Church of Christ. The university changed its name from Elmhurst College on July 1, 2020. Hist ...

.Christine Newman, "When Jim Met Gladys", "Chicago" Magazine, Vol. 60 No. 2, February 2011, pp. 78–81,92,146–148,164

Biography

Suellen Krupp was born in 1943 and grew up in a middle-class,

Jewish Jews ( he, יְהוּדִים, , ) or Jewish people are an ethnoreligious group and nation originating from the Israelites Israelite origins and kingdom: "The first act in the long drama of Jewish history is the age of the Israelites""The ...

family. She began attending classes at the

Art Institute of Chicago The Art Institute of Chicago in Chicago's Grant Park, founded in 1879, is one of the oldest and largest art museums in the world. Recognized for its curatorial efforts and popularity among visitors, the museum hosts approximately 1.5 mill ...

when she was in elementary school and knew she wanted to be an artist from the age of eight. She married her husband, Dennis Rocca, in 1962. He brought home jewelry catalogues that informed Rocca's artistic style. After her work with

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 ...

starting in 1965, Rocca had two children and continued her work as an artist. In 1970, she took a decade away from making art. In 2015 she returned to the art world with her exhibition at the

Matthew Marks Gallery Matthew Marks is an art gallery located in the New York City neighborhood of Chelsea and the Los Angeles neighborhood of West Hollywood. Founded in 1991 by Matthew Marks, it specializes in modern and contemporary painting, sculpture, photography, ...

in New York City. Rocco was a professor of painting, design, and drawing at

for 18 years. She was the director of the Art Exhibition and Visiting Artist Program, and the curator and director of exhibitions. Her image is included in the iconic 1972 poster Some Living American Women Artists by

Mary Beth Edelson Mary Beth Edelson (born Mary Elizabeth Johnson) (6 February 1933 - 20 April 2021) was an American artist and pioneer of the feminist art movement, deemed one of the notable "first-generation feminist artists." Edelson was a printmaker, book art ...

. Rocca died on March 26, 2020 from

pancreatic cancer Pancreatic cancer arises when cell (biology), cells in the pancreas, a glandular organ behind the stomach, begin to multiply out of control and form a Neoplasm, mass. These cancerous cells have the malignant, ability to invade other parts of t ...

Education

In 1960, at age 16, she began college at the

School of the Art Institute of Chicago The School of the Art Institute of Chicago (SAIC) is a private art school associated with the Art Institute of Chicago (AIC) in Chicago, Illinois. Tracing its history to an art students' cooperative founded in 1866, which grew into the museum and ...

. There, she was heavily influenced by Whitney Halsted and

Ray Yoshida Raymond "Ray" Kakuo Yoshida (October 3, 1930 – January 10, 2009) was an American artist known for his paintings and collages, and for his contributions as a teacher at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago from 1959 to 2005. He was an import ...

. In 1964, she received her BFA from SAIC with a major in painting and a minor in print-making.

Work and Exhibitions

Following graduation, she joined

, one of the groups of artists that made up the Chicago Imagists. Rocca's work is a mix of media and is influenced by her life experiences and interests. In an article from the

's website on the artist they describe her art with the Hairy Who and individually, "During the Hairy Who years, Rocca’s visual vocabulary expressed her personal taste as much as her experiences as a newlywed and young mother. She employed signs and symbols drawn from everything from the rebus-like pictograms in kindergarten reading primers to the jewelry trade catalogs in her husband’s family’s store. Often characterized as “picture writing,” Rocca's work maintains a sense of immediacy. In both its grid-like arrangements of repetitive glyphs punctuated by onomatopoeic words such as ohh, ahh, and eek, and the centrally located imagery framed by decorative borders, Rocca's intuitive and nebulous compositions stand apart from other Hairy Who work." In 2015, Rocca's work was displayed in New York City at

, her first New York show in over 20 years. The show featured Rocca's works made between 1965 and 1969. In 2018 the Art Institute of Chicago organized an exhibit entitled ''Hairy Who? 1966-1969'' on the Hairy Who in which Suellen Rocca is included. The exhibition ''Suellen Rocca Drawings'' at the Matthew Marks Gallery in New York City displayed drawings made from 1980 to 2018 and ran from September 14, to October 27, 2018. Rocca was the curator for the exhibition ''The Figure and the Chicago Imagists: Selections from the Elmhurst College Art Collection'' at the Elmhurst Art Museum which ran September 8-January 13, 2019. Rocca's work appeared in the Minneapolis Institute of Art, the Matthew Marks Gallery, The Art Institute of Chicago, and various traveling shows.

References

External links

Art Institute of Chicago: Rocco, Suellen.

Madison Museum of Contemporary Art: Rocco, Suellen.
{{DEFAULTSORT:Rocca, Suellen 1943 births 2020 deaths 20th-century American painters 21st-century American painters 20th-century American women artists 21st-century American women artists American women painters Artists from Chicago School of the Art Institute of Chicago alumni American Jews American women curators American curators