Evanston resident Peggy Lipschutz has had a colorful artistic career and the community will be able to view it up close and personal at what she is calling her last complete art show at the Noyes Cultural Arts Center in Evanston.
The exhibit titled, "Evanston Legend: The Art of Peggy Lipschutz" in the Noyes Art Gallery, will run through Nov. 1 and is sponsored by the City of Evanston and the Evanston Arts Council; produced by Prosperity Plus II2 and the Society of Seven Sisters; and curated by Jerri Zbiral. The space includes about 60 of Lipschutz's oil paintings from her ongoing career that has already spanned about 75 years.
"This is a good show that sums up 75 years," said Lipschutz of the retrospective show.
The original paintings hanging on the walls are Lipschutz's favorites and most popular. Some have already been sold and are lent back specifically for the show.
The 96-year-old artist was born in England and began as a black-and-white ink cartoonist when she was a child. At 18, while attending the Pratt Institute in Brooklyn, she dipped her paintbrush for the first time.
"I always enjoyed painting colors and shapes and lines, especially lines," she said. "I love lines to creep around the edges of things. I've been painting ever since."
Her inspiration to start dabbling in paint sparked with a visit to an Edgar Degas museum. In one of the galleries, she recalls seeing a beautiful Degas painting of a woman combing another woman's hair. She admired it so much, it made her want to pick up a paintbrush. She said she continues to enjoy the work of all the impressionist painters.
"I like human relations—people looking at each other, people holding each other, people fighting with each other, whatever people do," said Lipschutz of the subjects she likes to paint most. "It's interesting that I just happen to be into faces, expressions, moods. Sometimes I see something in the paper, for instance, I have a painting of two women consoling each other after their village in Bolivia was destroyed by a earthquake. It was just a little picture about two inches big, in black and white, but these women were holding each other. I loved it. I thought it was a great project to paint."
Lipschutz, who identifies as a lesbian, mentions she particularly enjoys painting women. Her collection of work features a wide range of genders, ages and races, among diverse other qualities.
Throughout the years, Lipschutz has worked in various mediums and has depicted many subjects. In her earlier artistic years she expressed her interest in unions, creating political cartoons for labor publications and a textbook. Union workers can still be seen in her vividly colored oil paintings.
In 1948, Lipschutz began using her interest in politics for her chalk drawings. At a rally for Henry Wallace's Progressive Party presidential campaign, Lipschutz was to illustrate Wallace's 10 point program, while a speaker spoke. However the speaker never showed up, so she took on the talk and simultaneous drawing, which was her first "Chalk Talk."
During the following years, she took her drawings with a message to union halls, PTAs, progressive political groups and other organizations.
In the '60s, her "Chalk Talks" transformed into "Songs You Can See" as she worked with various musicians, drawing their songs with themes of social issues, including conflict resolution, equality and justice, in chalk. Over the years, Lipschutz took these "Songs You Can See" around the country.
With the fat pieces of chalk she used, "Songs You Can See" captured topics such as the struggles of many of Chicago's labor unions, anti-war campaigns, the civil-rights movements of the '60s, Harold Washington's mayoral campaign, and many others. Her illustrations aimed to portray a message of labor unity, democracy and struggle.
"That's what was so much fun that I could put all the things that I loved into daily life," Lipschutz said of her chalk work. "Caring about the unions, caring about justice and those things and music and getting out, talking to people; it was fun."
Her paintings, Lipschutz described, are typically taken from photos she finds and she then inserts her own creativity and imagination.
"I like to start from something and then sort of develop an idea from it," said Lipschutz. "I like to put in a few angels here and there or other kinds of spirits."
Outside of the art, Lipschutz is a mother of three adult children, a grandmother, a great-grandmother and a member of Seven Sisters.
"For me it's a sort of way of expressing love," Lipschutz said about painting, which she now does from the studio she has set up in her living room. "You have you to love the people that you paint. Even if they're not somebody you really actually love, it's a very sensual occupation. It's a way of expressing feelings and moods, which is what I'm very much into. That's why I do it because it expresses my feeling toward the things I'm painting. It's a way of honoring them and bringing out what's special about different people, different times and different states of age and mood and income."
For more information, visit: www.cityofevanston.org/arts-culture/noyes-cultural-arts-center/exhibits/index.php .
