Ed McGowin

Ed McGowin was born in Hattiesburg, Mississippi, in 1938. He completed a B.S. at the University of Southern Mississippi in 1961 and an M.A. at the University of Alabama in 1964. He received National Endowment for the Arts grants in 1967 and 1980 and has exhibited widely, including at the Center for the Fine Arts in Miami, the Institute of Contemporary Art in Philadelphia, and the Fort Worth Art Museum. His art can be found in the collections of the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden in Washington, D.C., the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York, the Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago, and the Kunstmuseet Collection in Lund, Sweden. He has been a professor at several universities and art schools since 1963. McGowin's series of paintings with hand-carved frames depicts a dense, menacing world given over to the human primordial instinct to dominate. A dark, absurd humor adds tension to these twisted narratives, which recall earlier historical treatments of battles or crowd scenes. His figures, typically engaged in such mundane activities as checking the time or tying ties, cross cultural and economic lines.

*Excerpted from Tools as Art: The Hechinger Collection, published by Harry N. Abrams Inc.