Evelyn Statsinger (1927-2016) depicted her experiences of the natural world through drawing, painting and sculpture. Her early drawings, characterized by their clean lines and all-over patterns, drew the interest of luminary artists and museum curators including director of IIT Mies Van Der Rohe, and Art Institute of Chicago curators Katharine Kuh and Carl Schniewind, and led to solo exhibition at the Art Institute in 1952 and 1957. In her mature work, she relinquished readily identifiable forms such as the figure in favor of fantasy forms abstracted from nature. Statsinger worked across a variety of media creating complex psychological and colorful compositions that balance abstraction, representation and fantasy.
Statsinger studied at the Art Students League in New York. In Chicago, she studied for a year at the University of Chicago and received her degree from the School of the Art Institute in 1949. At that time she was associated with Chicago’s “Monster Roster” painters because of the distorted figures present in her early work. Evelyn Statsinger’s work can be found in numerous public art collections including: The Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago, Illinois; Elmhurst College, Buehler Library Art Collection, Elmhurst, Illinois; Illinois State Museum, Springfield, Illinois ; National Art Gallery, Wellington, New Zealand; Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago, Illinois ; Museum of Graphic Art, New York, New York; Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania; Richland Community College, Decatur, Illinois; Rockford Art Museum, Rockford, Illinois; Smart Museum of Art, University of Chicago, Illinois; Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington DC; and Worcester Art Museum, Worcester, Massachusetts."