Classic Chicago: The Art of Architecture

Enjoy a 360 degree tour of the exhibition HERE.

A display of monumental grandeur is coming to Elmhurst this March. The Elmhurst Artists’ Guild (EAG) is proud to announce Classic Chicago: The Art of Architecture, an exhibition of large-scale, detailed graphite drawings by Jack Nixon. While practicing excellent draughtsmanship and graphite rendering, Jack Nixon documents grand urban landscapes and vignettes of Chicago’s buildings, monuments, and decorative stone fragments. His work glorifies the city’s late 19th and early 20th century Neoclassic, Gothic Revival, and Art Deco architectural styles and displays a superb sense of composition and space.

With a concern for saving our most beautiful buildings and public sculptures, displaying a new standard of old-world representation as a master of trompe l’oeil Realism, Mr. Nixon provides a uniquely contemporary view of architecture as art. His large and detailed graphite drawings are a direct response to his love for Chicago’s Loop, Grant Park, and North Michigan Avenue architecture and sculpture which he has depicted in the highest illustrative quality. Inspired by history’s great 18th century Italian printmaker, Giovanni Battista Piranesi; the fine engravings of the French multi-volume Description de l’Egypte (1809-1829); the imaginative mid 19th century Ecole des Beaux-Arts watercolor and gouache reconstructions of ancient Roman and Greek temples; and J.J. Audubon, Mr. Nixon has created a portfolio of master original drawings called: “Classic Chicago: the Art of Architecture.”