Patricia Cronin

In Patricia Cronin’s work, traditional forms of art making—oil painting, sculpture, and watercolor, for instance—are the channels through which she addresses various contemporary political issues. Cronin’s themes cover homosexuality, feminism, the body, sex, class, and art history. She has expressed these themes in conjunction with historical figures such as Dante Alighieri or Harriet Hosmer, the 19th-century expatriate sculptor. Cronin first gained recognition in the 1990s for a series of performance-based photographs and watercolors depicting the artist in the act of love making with her partner, and since then, she has continued to develop a sophisticated and dynamic artistic practice.

Cronin has had solo exhibitions in New York at both the Brooklyn Museum and White Columns, as well as in Rome at Musei Capitolini Centrale Montemartini and the American Academy in Rome Art Gallery. Selected group exhibitions include those staged at the New Museum in New York, the FLAG Art Foundation in New York, Kelvingrove Art Gallery and Museum in Glasgow, the Atlanta Center for Contemporary Art, and the Drawing Center in New York.