Respected as an artist, beloved as a teacher, and valued as a friend, Christina Ramberg was a central figure in the contemporary Chicago art world.

While she’s often affiliated with the Chicago Imagists—a loose fellowship of artists whose varied artwork nevertheless relied on a shared commitment to powerful, personalized imagery that frequently drew from popular culture—Ramberg’s distinct aesthetic set her apart.

Christina Ramberg: A Retrospective, ranges across her too-short career—from her signature paintings of cropped female bodies in decorative and detailed lingerie to her late abstractions to rare archival material from her estate.

It’s this full-spectrum look at Ramberg’s career—the sweep of both her artistic production and the various personal collections that fueled it—that makes this show and the accompanying catalogue so special. Her art and collections not only run parallel to one another but eventually permeate and emulate one another, so presenting them together exposes the connections between the disparate moments, scales, and media of her career.

Article by Thea Liberty Nichols, associate researcher of Modern and Contemporary Art at the Art Institute of Chicago.