November 29-December 28, 2019

Tory Folliard Gallery celebrates the career of well-known Wisconsin artist John Wilde (1919-2006) with an exhibition titled John Wilde – 100.  This important exhibition marks the 100th anniversary of the artist’s birth and includes drawings and paintings from 1940-2005.  

For the last 75 years Wilde’s art has been considered the most beautiful and powerful work to come out of Wisconsin. He was a renowned draftsman and painter who in spite of a very successful national career never left Wisconsin.

John Wilde will be remembered as one of the leaders in the Magic Realist movement – America’s version of Surrealism.   He has had an impact on art history and a generation of artists with his small and beautifully, detailed works of his “favorite things” … giant fruits and vegetables, naked ladies, elegant gentlemen, fantastic birds and beasts.  In Wilde’s world, even the most outrageous things seem natural.

Wilde's work is represented in the Whitney Museum of Art, Crystal Bridges Museum of Art, Cleveland Museum of Art, Minneapolis Institute of Art, Walker Art Center, Art Institute of Chicago, Milwaukee Art Museum, Yale University Art Gallery, Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, Museum of Wisconsin Art, Detroit Institute of Art, Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago, Portland Art Museum, and Smithsonian American Art Museum, among many others.

Tory Folliard Gallery has represented John Wilde’s work since 1993.