From the Windows

1995; mixed media collage, 10 x 12 inches, signed and dated

A Peace Piece

c. 1968-1970; mixed media collage on paper, 18 x 24 inches, signed; titled verso

Ralph Arnold was an artist and educator whose collages and assemblages utilized photography, text, and paint to explore race, gender, sexuality, and politics. Arnold received his BFA at the Art Institute of Chicago, where he studied with master printmaker Vera Berdich, whose experimental approach and ties to the emerging Chicago Imagists shaped his eye for bold, graphic invention.

Arnold’s compositions move between the documentary and the abstract, using photojournalistic images of Black life and culture with typographic fragments and abstract expressionist devices to build what critic (and fellow artist) Keith Morrison called “abstract narratives about life in his time.” His work was exhibited in the early 1960s at the Hyde Park Art Center, and he was represented in Chicago by Benjamin Galleries from 1964 to 1969, Gilman Galleries, and Van Straaten Gallery, all in Chicago, which held solo exhibitions in their respective spaces.

Arnold served the South Side Community Art Center as a board member, donor to its annual auctions, and frequent exhibitor, including the 1973 solo show Some Old and Some New. Arnold taught at Hyde Park Art Center, Rockford College, Barat College, and Loyola University, Chicago, where he chaired the Fine Arts department. In 2006, the Ralph Arnold Gallery was established at Loyola in his memory as a part exhibition/part workspace in tribute to his advocacy for the arts

His work is held by the Art Institute of Chicago, the Brooklyn Museum, the Whitney Museum of American Art, the South Side Community Art Center, and the corporate collection of Johnson Publishing Company.