Ida Applebroog was born
in the Bronx, New York in 1929, and lives and works in New York.
She attended the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and received
an honorary doctorate
from
New School University/Parsons School of Design. Applebroog has
been making pointed social commentary in the form of beguiling
comic-like images for nearly half a century. She has developed
an instantly recognizable style of simplified human forms with
bold outlines. Anonymous ‘everyman’ figures, anthropomorphized
animals, and half human-half creature characters are featured players
in the uncanny theater of her work. Applebroog propels her paintings
and drawings into the realm of installation by arranging and stacking
canvases in space, exploding the frame-by-frame logic of comic-book
and film narrative into three-dimensional environments. In her
most characteristic work, she combines popular imagery from everyday
urban and domestic scenes, sometimes paired with curt texts, to
skew otherwise banal images into anxious scenarios infused with
a sense of irony and black humor. Strong themes in her work include
gender and sexual identity, power struggles both political and
personal, and the pernicious role of mass media in desensitizing
the public to violence. In addition to paintings, Applebroog has
also created sculptures; artist’s books; several films (including
a collaboration with her daughter, the artist Beth B); and animated
shorts that appeared on the side of a moving truck and on a giant
screen in Times Square. Applebroog has received many awards, including
a John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation Achievement Award
and a Lifetime Achievement Award from the College Art Association.
Her work has been shown in many one-person exhibitions in the United
States and abroad, including the Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington,
DC; Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; the Contemporary
Arts Museum, Houston; and the High Museum of Art, Atlanta, among
others.
For additional biographic & bibliographic information:
Ida Applebroog's Web Site | Hauser & Wirth
Ida Applebroog on the Art21 blog |
