Robert Lostutter
Born: 1939 (Emporia, KS, United States)
Although Robert Lostutter did not participate in group exhibitions at the Hyde Park Art Center, he was a member of what is now known as the Chicago Imagist circle. Lostutter attended the School of the Art Institute of Chicago (SAIC) in the late 1950s and early 1960s, and shared his contemporaries’ interest in figurative imagery based in popular culture and fantasy. He was greatly influenced by the instructor John Rogers Cox, who stressed traditional drawing and painting techniques. While today Lostutter is renowned for his meticulous watercolor process, early in his career he primarily used the medium to create preliminary studies for larger oil paintings. By the 1970s, he saw the potential in refining his watercolor method and it soon became his preferred medium. Lostutter saves all preparatory drawings and color charts and—wishing to expose the seams of his process and attribute value to each additive step—included several examples of each in a 2006 retrospective exhibition at the Chicago Cultural Center.
Like Ed Paschke, Lostutter became critically acclaimed for his composite figures. But where Paschke focused on distorted or mixed-and-matched figures from the mass media, Lostutter blurred the distinction between human, plant, and animal. Returning from a trip to Mexico in the 1970s, Lostutter became increasingly mesmerized by the otherworldly beauty of the tropical birds he had encountered in his travels. Subsequently, he began to make drawings and paintings of bird-men transfigured by multicolored and richly textured feathers. His gaze soon expanded to the muted tones of female birds, where he saw a subtle beauty that contrasted with the exuberance of male plumage. In the exotic world of Lostutter’s hybrid individuals, human faces are masked with feathers and sometimes complemented by leaves growing from their bodies.
Lostutter’s paintings envision a complete integration of man and nature in paradise. The way in which his figures peer out of the frame suggests the opening of communicative channels between their world and ours; sometimes they appear to be preening, other times they seem to appeal for their own conservation. The artist’s bird-humans echo Max Ernst’s surrealist fascination with the same hybrid creatures and John James Audubon’s extensive catalog, Birds of America. His interests are not limited to birds; in recent years he has also become fascinated by women wearing complicated costumes, viewed from distorting vantages. He also continues to be absorbed by Eden and the concept of paradise.
Artworks
Untitled
1963
The Birds of Heaven 14, Red-fronted Conure
1974
Hummingbirds in the Late Afternoon
1984
Untitled
1969
Untitled
1970
Dutchman
1972
Untitled
1972
Mexico II
1973
Mimosa I…Dark Ice
1975
The Birds of Heaven: Sarus Crane
1976
Scarlet Tanager
1976
Puerto Rican Tody
1977
In the Paradise It Is Night
1979
Cattleya
1980
Cattleya
1980
Untitled
1980
Untitled
1980
Oncidium
1980
Weeping for Mimosa
1981
Quetzal
1981
Gold-Fronted Woodpecker
1981
Weeping, for the Order
1981
White-Fronted Antbird
1981
African Paradise Flycatcher
1981
Untitled
1983
Green Backed Fire-Crown and Fork-Tailed Woodnymph
1983
Studies for King Bird of Paradise
Studies for King Bird of Paradise
c. 1983
Studies for King Bird of Paradise
Studies for King Bird of Paradise
King Bird of Paradise
1983
King Bird of Paradise
1983
Neofinetia Fallata
1996
Three studies and poem for Trader of Green
c. 1998
Trader of Green
1998
Melancholic
1999
A Sign of My Time: Miltonia Species
1975
Gold-Fronted Woodpecker, First Study
1981
First Drawing for Spangled Coquette
1995
Untitled #27
1994
Lepanthes Ibanezii
1998
Four preparatory drawings and six palettes (Studies for Rainforest)
c. 1991
Untitled (Study for Rainforest)
1991
Untitled (Study for Rainforest)
1991
Toucan (preparatory drawing and tracing)
c. 1975
Hummingbirds
1982
Untitled
1971
Untitled
1973
Untitled
1974
Untitled
1972
Untitled
December 1971
Hummingbird
1982
Toucan
1976
Chelmon Rostratus
1975
Untitled
September 1972
Wahnes Parotia
2009
About the Sun Going Down–Mexico
1973
Stepdance 2
1976
Midnight Garden
2015
Spangled Coquette
1995
Spotted Forktail
1977
Preparatory drawing and two palettes (Study for Plate-Billed Mountain Toucan)
1986-1990
Preparatory drawing and two palettes (Study for Plate-Billed Mountain Toucan)
1986-1990
Preparatory drawing and two palettes (Study for Plate-Billed Mountain Toucan)
1986-1990
Three preparatory drawings (Study for Parrot Watching the Sun Go Down)
1986
Three preparatory drawings (Study for Parrot Watching the Sun Go Down)
1986
Three preparatory drawings (Study for Parrot Watching the Sun Go Down)
1986
The Watch
1987
Ross’s Turaco Looking Back
1988
Untitled
1985
Six Color Palettes
2002
Parrot Watching the Sun Go Down
1986
Dutch Expression (study and palette)
1975
Two Hummingbirds (Study for Scintillant Hummingbird and Gorgeted Woodstar)
1982
Scintillant Hummingbird and Gorgeted Woodstar
1982
Garnet-Throated Hummingbird and Purple Carib
1984
Cinnamon Hummingbird and Allied Emerald
1984
Hummingbirds – Gould’s Jewelfront and Blue Throated Hummingbird
1988
The Man Who Remembers What Birds Once Looked Like
1973
Fish
c. 1974
Mandril
1976
Untitled
1973
Untitled (Study for Fish)
1972
In the Forest It Is Night
1980
Dutchman 3
1974
Garden of Opiates 2
2012
Flemish Cloth
2011
Garden of Opiates 8
2011
Garden of Opiates 2
2009
Untitled
1974
Morning for the Plate-Billed Mountain Toucan
1989
Orchid and Hummingbird
1978
Untitled
1972
Untitled (head of man and woman)
1996
Untitled
1996
Untitled
1996
Untitled
1980
Cattleya
1980
Untitled
1995
Kyōsei 22
2018
Kyōsei 18
2018