Untitled (room with stairs)

Cosmo Campoli was a Chicago-based sculptor, known for his figurative work centered on the themes of birth and death, and for his use of bold, surreal bird and egg imagery. He was a member of a group of School of the Art Institute of Chicago artists collectively dubbed the "Monster Roster" by critic Franz Schulze in the late 1950s, based on their affinity for sometimes gruesome, expressive figuration, fantasy and mythology, and existential thought. That group included, among others, Leon Golub, George Cohen, June Leaf, H.C. Westermann, Seymour Rosofsky, and Theodore Halkin. Campoli rose to prominence in the 1950s locally and nationally when art historian and curator Peter Selz featured him, Golub and Cohen in a 1955 ARTnews article, "Is There a New Chicago School?", and included him, Golub and Westermann in the 1959 Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) exhibition, New Images of Man, as examples of vanguard expressive figurative work in Europe and the United States. Campoli's work was also shown at the Art Institute of Chicago, the Smart Museum of Art, Beloit College, the Hyde Park Art Center, and in a career retrospective at Chicago's Museum of Contemporary Art in 1971. Campoli was hampered in later years by bipolar disorder.