Barbara Rossi

Barbara Rossi is an artist associated with the Chicago Imagist movement of the mid-20th Century. Rossi’s paintings are recognisable through their pastel green, lavender and pale-yellow depictions of amorphous yet somehow perceptible figures and uncertain shapes in a style that straddles both abstraction and figuration. Rossi appropriated imagery and techniques from a wide variety of sources and cultures, including pointillism, surrealism, Mughal-era miniature paintings – for which Rossi travelled to India to research first-hand – and Aboriginal Australian painting, whose inspiration can be seen in the artist’s reverse Plexiglas works. Rossi remarks that the varied references from which she takes reference are “a special kind of image that lets you know how much there is in the world.”