Ed Paschke, “Mano d’Orange”, Oil on Linen, 2003

Edward Francis Paschke was a Polish American painter. His childhood interest in animation and cartoons, as well as his father’s creativity in wood carving and construction, led him toward a career in art. As a student at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago he was influenced by many artists featured in the Museum’s special exhibitions, in particular the work of Gauguin, Picasso and Seurat.

Unlike most of his Pop predecessors with their unthreatening embrace of popular culture, Paschke gravitated towards the images that exemplified the underside of American values — fame, violence, sex, and money — a preference that he shared with Andy Warhol, who was one of his foremost inspirations. In the fall of 1984, he was featured on the cover of Art in America magazine, with a great review of his work offered as a powerful alternative to the then popular Neo-Expressionism that was sweeping the New York art scene. Later considered to be an artist of his own time and place, his explorations of the archetypes and clichés of media identity prefigured the appropriative gestures of the “Pictures Generation” and for a new generation of global artists his totemic, eye-popping paintings have come to embody the essence of cosmopolitan art.