Visual art
Dana Schutz
born 1976 · painter
Painter from Livonia, in suburban Detroit, known for inventive, colorful figurative canvases that stage strange scenarios and imagined events.
- Born
Livonia, Michigan- Detroit years
- 1976–1990s
- Field
- Visual art
01 / The Detroit story
The Detroit story
Schutz was born in 1976 in Livonia, a suburb west of Detroit, and grew up there before leaving to study painting at the Cleveland Institute of Art and then at Columbia University in New York, where she earned her MFA in 2002. She quickly drew attention with thickly painted, brightly colored figurative works built around invented premises, such as a series imagining the last man on earth, people eating themselves, or everyday activities pushed into the absurd. Her paintings entered major museum collections and were shown at the Venice Biennale. In 2017 her painting Open Casket, based on the photograph of the murdered teenager Emmett Till, sparked protests and a national debate about who may depict Black suffering when it was shown at the Whitney Biennial. She lives and works in Brooklyn; her Detroit connection is her suburban Michigan childhood.
Highlights
- Born and raised in Livonia, Michigan
- MFA from Columbia University (2002)
- Known for inventive, brightly colored figurative painting
- Open Casket (2016) sparked debate at the 2017 Whitney Biennial