Moon Meet May

Barbara Rossi’s figurative imagery in the 1970s was intentionally abstract and often unrecognizable anatomically. Although these earlier figures had recognizable body parts and were usually based on existing models, their reconfigurations were enigmatic. (See Smart Museum 1996.34, 2001.123, 2001.394a-b.) Like many other Chicago Imagist artists of her generation, she was much inspired by her teacher Ray Yoshida (1930‒2009) at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. (See 1996.19.)

In the 1980s she began to paint figures described by geometry, such as this 1993 mixed intaglio print image based on the module of a circle. Though mysterious and monochromatic, it is still possible to discern in it a lovers’ tryst. There is even the suggestion of a sultry nocturnal garden atmosphere, which becomes evident as the curving lines resolve into a more fixed image of bodies clothed barely in free-flowing diaphanous fabrics. Rossi was much inspired by Indian art and is referring to KrishnaRadha, whose male-female unity expresses a profound personal experience of God resulting in divine bliss. In this composition the sweeping line-work expresses a sense of freedom while its continuity simultaneously makes it almost impossible to visually disengage the individual male and female figures from one another.