Big School Picture; Little Paper Mural

Attending the School of the Art Institute of Chicago (SAIC) in the early 1960s, Gladys Nilsson studied with and befriended the art history professor Whitney Halstead. Among the most celebrated watercolorists working today, Nilsson builds her compositions by applying thin layers of transparent wash, resulting in great depth and brilliant colors. This watercolor depicting crowds of students across multiple spaces was originally commissioned by SAIC to be used as an advertising poster. The work is filled with her typically dense groupings of figures, organized lyrically and playfully within the composition.