Barbara Rossi

Barbara Rossi (born 1940) is a Chicago artist, one of the original Chicago Imagists, a group in the 1960s and 1970s who turned to representational art. She first exhibited with them at the Hyde Park Art Center in 1969. She is known for meticulously rendered drawings and cartoonish paintings. She works primarily by making reverse paintings on plexiglass that reference lowbrow and outsider art as well as a personal vernacular.
She teaches at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Rossi has exhibited internationally, and her works are in the collections of the Art Institute of Chicago; the Madison Museum of Contemporary Art, Wisconsin; the Milwaukee Museum of Contemporary Art; the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago; the David and Alfred Smart Museum, the University of Chicago; and the Smithsonian Museum of American Art, Washington, DC.

Rossi was born in Chicago in 1940, and lives in Berwyn, Illinois. She received her Bachelor of Arts from St. Xavier College in 1964. Rossi’s drawing style began to emerge in 1967, during a Saturday course at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. She exhibited a drawing in the 1968 Chicago and Vicinity exhibition at the Art Institute of Chicago, and later that year, she entered the Master of Fine Arts program at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. She met and was soon exhibiting her work alongside other Imagist artists. She received her Master of Fine Arts in 1970.

• Barbara Rossi: Poor Traits. New Museum NY (16 September 2015 - 3 January 2016)
• Meanwhile in Lonesome Valley. Loudhailer Gallery LA (20 June - 1 August 2015). Group exhibit.
• Barbara Rossi (21 April - 4 June 1995) Tarble Arts Center Eastern Illinois University
• Barbara Rossi Selected Works: 1967-1990 (13 January - 24 February 1991) Renaissance Society, University of Chicago
• Some Recent Art from Chicago. University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (10 February - 2 March 1980). Group exhibit. Works exhibited: Viking Smoking (1970), Shep and Poor-Self Trait, (1970), Curls and Poor-Self Trait (1970), Quilt (Male of Sorrows) (1971), 3-D Do (1973)
• Who Chicago? an exhibition of contemporary imagists. London (10 December - 25 January 1981). Group exhibit. Works exhibited: Poor Self Trait 3 (Curls) Diptych (1970), 3-D Do (1973, Shep Step II (1973), Fishing Picture (1975), Quick-n-Quack (1975), A Bark Drawing (1976), Waveland (1977), De Risen (1978)
• XII Bienal de São Paulo: Made In Chicago (1973–74) Museu de Arte, São Paulo, Brazil
• Twenty-Fourth Illinois Invitational Exhibition (1971) Illinois State Museum, Springfield, IL
• Seventy-First Annual Exhibition by Artists of Chicago and Vicinity (30 March - 12 May 1968) Art Institute of Chicago

• "Barbara Rossi: Poor Traits". New Museum. Retrieved 5 March 2016. 
• "Barbara Rossi featured in group show, Meanwhile in Lonesome Valley at Loudhailer Gallery". Corbett vs. Dempsey. Retrieved 5 March 2016. 
• Barbara Rossi (exhibition brochure). Eastern Illinois University: Tarble Arts Center. 1995. p. 1. 
• Dennis, Adrian (1991). Barbara Rossi Selected Works: 1967-1990. University of Chicago: Renaissance Society. 
• Keefe, Katharine Lee (1980). Some recent art from Chicago. University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill: The Museum. pp. 76–77. 
• Knipe, Tony (1980). Who Chicago? : an exhibition of contemporary imagists. Sunderland, England: Ceolfrith Gallery, Sunderland Arts Centre. pp. 212–213. ISBN 0-904461-66-1. 
• Catálogo da 12ª Bienal de São Paulo. 1973. pp. 102, 103, 105, 454. Retrieved 6 March 2016.