John Wilde’s Blue Grapes with White Bow (1986)
Well-known Wisconsin painter John Wilde (1919-2006) had an officious start. A young man during World War II, the Army assigned him the job of drawing venereal disease prevention propaganda. With such training, maybe he was predestined to embrace surrealism or its offshoot, magic realism. Wilde’s work, characterized by its delicacy and precise draftsmanship, plays with scale to conjure fairylike settings where tiny nude women romp within nature, and cavort among birds and beasts. Dashes of Brueghel and Bosch unite with a Midwestern prankster’s whimsy, lending even his still-life paintings a trippy air. Icy eggshell colors assist in harnessing Wilde’s subjects to this dream zone. And having taught at the University of Wisconsin-Madison for more than 30 years, his work influenced many regional artists, including Fred Stonehouse and Flora Langlois. (Debra Brehmer)
