Jimmy Wright 4 Sep - 1 Oct 2026 11 Duke Street, St James's

In collaboration with Corbett vs. Dempsey

Private view: Thursday 3 September, 6–8pm

Thomas Dane Gallery
11 Duke Street, St James’s, London SW1

Thomas Dane Gallery is pleased to present an exhibition of paintings by American artist Jimmy Wright (b. 1944, Union City TN). Titled After the War, the exhibition will feature Wright’s flower paintings and works on paper, made from 1992 onwards. 

Jimmy Wright has lived and worked in New York since the early 1970s. After growing up in rural Kentucky, Wright moved to Chicago to study at the Art Institute of Chicago where he became close friends with members of The False Image group, including Philip Hanson, Christina Ramberg and Roger Brown. In 1974 he moved to New York where he started documenting the flourishing queer landscape of gay bathhouses and bars throughout Manhattan; this post-Stonewall and pre-AIDS epidemic moment is captured in works like Max’s Kansas City (1974) and drawings of scenes at Club 82 and the Anvil. With the diagnosis of his partner, Ken Nuzzo, with AIDS in 1988, Wright began working exclusively on paintings of flowers, in a series of emotionally charged works, highly textured in heavily impastoed oil, titled Flowers for Ken. This became a favourite subject matter for the rest of his career and the works in After the War can be seen as portraits of the artistic community lost to the pandemic. 

Recent solo exhibitions include: Down Home, Corbett vs. Dempsey, Chicago IL (2023); Flowers for Ken, Fierman, New York NY (2022), and LA 73 – NY 74, M&B Gallery, Los Angeles CA (2019). His work is in the collections of The Whitney Museum of American Art, New York NY; The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York NY; The Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago IL; The Hammer Museum, Los Angeles CA; the Speed Art Museum, Louisville KY; the Center for Book and Paper Arts, Columbia College, Chicago IL; and The Springfield Art Museum, Springfield MO, among other institutions. His most recent monograph, Jimmy Wright: Bathhouse, Meatpacking District and the Dream Cards: New York Underground 1973-90, was published in 2016. In 2018 he was named Academician of the National Academy of Design.

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Jimmy Wright, Sun and Shadow, 1999–2001 © Jimmy Wright. Courtesy the artist and Corbett vs. Dempsey, Chicago.