Child and Man

Seymour Rosofsky (1924-1981) was a seminal figure in the development of a distinctive Chicago school in 20th-century art. He was born to Jewish immigrant parents on Chicago's West Side. Rosofsky received a BFA and a MFA from the Art Institute of Chicago, where he studied with Boris Anisfeld, a former student of Chagall whose teaching emphasized traditional academic skills. Rosofsky gained recognition in the 1950s as one of a group of Chicago artists dubbed the "Monster Roster," whose unsettling imagery prefigured the later work of the Chicago Imagists. He won a Fulbright scholarship to Rome in 1958-59 and studied in Paris as a Guggenheim Foundation fellow in 1962-64.

Like many of Rosofsky's works, Child and Man depicts puppet-like figures engaged in a nightmarish scene that resists interpretation. At left, a man in a hat with earflaps stands with his right arm extended. His legless, hollow body is split open at the waist, revealing crows. At the right stands a young child who is zipped into a footless snuggie. He has a pacifier in his mouth, and his left arm is extended. Crows gather on the extended arms of both figures.