Biography

The current prints and paintings of Diane Thodos promise to be an intense emotional experience that reflects the turbulence of our times. Without directly naming the origin of contemporary traumas such as, 9-11, terrorism, or the war in Iraq, she attempts to essentialized emotional states in graphic form in order to grasp their universal and often tragic significance. Her work often balances emotional intensity with energetic immediacy as an inspired tribute to Modernism, merging figure and abstraction in her own unique and intuitive compositional dynamic.

As a Pollock-Krasner Grant recipiant in 2002 her art embodies the Expressionist essence of feeling in art strongly influenced by the historical movements of both American Abstract and German Expressionism. As a student of Jackson Pollack’s Abstract Expressionist teacher Stanley William Hayter Diane Thodos developed the use of automatist line and gesture that combined with her enduring interest in the powerful graphic techniques of German Expressionist printmaking (1906 – 1924) which she studied extensively in the Specks collection from the Chicago area and the Milwaukee Art Museum.

Her work is represented on an international basis by the Paule Friedland and Alex Rivault Gallery in Paris. She has also studied with the New York art critic Donald Kuspit from 1987 to 1992 and focused much critical writing on Chicago art history and Expressionism with articles appearing in Art on Paper, the Chicago Artist’s Coalition News, and the New Art Examiner. Her work has been collected by The Milwaukee Museum of Art, The Smart Museum of Art in Chicago, The Koehnline Museum, and The Strake Jesuit Museum in Houston, Texas among many others.