Profile Portrait

Often considered Chicago's most-collected artist, the self-taught, transient Lee Godie began selling her work on the steps of the Art Institute of Chicago in the 1960s. The offbeat allure of her paintings – often female busts of personal or archetypal significance, rendered in an unmistakable idiosyncratic style that Godie herself favorably compared to Cézanne's – was heightened by Godie's theatrical persona. Donning garish face paint and pieced-together furs, she would incorporate song and dance routines into her sales, exuberantly scumbling the distinction between portraiture and performance art.