Karl Wirsum was a true original and legendary member of the Hairy Who and Chicago Imagists. We mourn the loss and celebrate his life and are so honored to have one of his lithographs in our permanent collection. “Inner ‘E’ Stare Bonnet”, Ed. 5/20 by Karl Wirsum (1939-2021)

“Basically what I try to do is set up an enjoyment level. My whole system of creativity is based on a kind of enjoyment, even though some of the things I may do may have some grotesque elements to them, or, not all kind of joyful in the final result. A lot of my stuff… hopefully has some kind of mysterious element or some other kind of thing happening with it. But, basically, my own mood has to do with feeling good.”—Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago interview, 1981, chicagoimagists.com © The Chicago Imagists

Karl Wirsum was born to a working-class family of recent German immigrants on the northwest side of Chicago in 1939. His father, a mechanic, and his mother, a seamstress, were killed in a car accident when Wirsum was 9 years old. He moved to the far southeast side of the city, near a campus of steel refineries, to live with a close family friend who earned his living as an upholsterer. During a long hospital stay in his childhood, Wirsum amused himself by drawing pictures. A nurse noticed his natural talent and suggested that he might benefit from Saturday classes offered to children by the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. This was Wirsum’s first formal interaction with art, and it stuck. After graduating from high school, Wirsum enrolled as a full-time undergraduate at SAIC. Wirsum’s art is in the collections of institutions around the world, including the Art Institute of Chicago, Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, Museum Moderner Kunst Stiftung Ludwig Vienna, Smithsonian American Art Museum Washington D.C., and Whitney Museum of American Art in New York. Wirsum is perhaps best known to Chicagoans for his mural Plug Bug, created in 1991 on the side of a ComEd electrical substation on Block 37, a formerly empty block in the middle of Chicago’s downtown. Learn more about him at chicagoimagists.com.