Suellen Rocca

This is the first monograph on Chicago-based Hairy Who artist Suellen Rocca (born 1943), presenting her paintings, drawings and prints from the 1960s. Among her contemporaries, Rocca’s work is notable for its vocabulary of pictographic imagery inspired by consumer catalogues, magazine advertisements and children’s activity books.

Featuring full-color plates of more than 50 artworks, virtually all of which are reproduced here for the first time, this volume presents a thorough overview of the artist’s work from 1964 to 1969. An essay by Dan Nadel traces Rocca’s artistic development, situating her within art history. Sarah Lehrer-Graiwer’s essay employs verse and prose to explore the thematic undercurrents of Rocca’s work. Completing the book are a bibliography and a narrative chronology of the artist’s life, illustrated with historical photographs and ephemera from her archive.

A lesser-known member of a lesser-known art movement - the bumptiously surrealistic Chicago Hairy Who of the nineteen sixties, Rocca is a find. (The Newyorker)