Monster Roster artist Evelyn Statsinger died on February 13, 2016 in Chicago. The news of her passing was shared by the Richard Gray Gallery.

Only briefly and tangentially connected to the Roster, Statsinger made an important series of large-scale drawings in the late 1940s and early ’50s, when just out of the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. One work in this series, Tyranny of the Half Remembered (ca. 1950s) is included in the Monster Roster exhibition.

Populated with totemic figures made of intricate, delicately inked patterns varying in density, active scenarios with mysterious goings on afoot, they have a unique place in the history of Chicago art. Statsinger departed from them quickly and began a career painting marvelously rich abstract paintings.

This text was adapted from from John Corbett’s “Introducing: The Roster” in the Monster Roster exhibition catalogue. 

The miracle is that when one truly looks at art, our own vision and experience recombines with the experience of others to re-create and reunite the past and present, in recognition of those things that make us truly human—spanning all time and all nationalities.

—Evelyn Statsinger