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Thumbnail-size images of copyrighted artworks are displayed under fair use, in accordance with guidelines recommended by the Code of Best Practices in Fair Use for the Visual Arts, published by the College Art Association in February 2015.
Comforter (Armour Defeat)
Barbara Rossi (American, 1940 – 2023)
1970
Medium/Technique
Etching and aquatint on stitched nylon cire
Dimensions
Height x width: 182.9 × 147.3 cm (72 × 58 in.)
Credit Line
Gift of Kohler Foundation, Inc
Accession Number2021.817
NOT ON VIEW
ClassificationsTextiles
This comforter literally and figuratively suggests care, warmth, and protection—or at least the possibility of a nap. Look closely at the repeated fleshy, biomorphic, cartoon-like motif, its swollen, arched forms suggestive of the threshold of the human body and its interior organs. The puckered, textural surface produces a skin-like effect. The figure is flanked by two small, curving limbs: an arm with a hand pinching the central form, and a serpentine leg pointing its toes away. Barbara Rossi is an original Chicago Imagist, late 1960s and 1970s artists who—interested in non-Western, popular, and everyday imagery—created raw and often distorted figurative aesthetics.
Description
Provenance2020, sold by the artist to Kohler Foundation, Inc, Kohler, WI; 2021, gift of Kohler Foundation, Inc to the MFA. (Accession Date: December 15, 2021)
CopyrightReproduced with permission.