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John Dilg (born 1945) is an American painter based in the Midwest. He is known for idiosyncratic landscapes that use a pared-down visual vocabulary drawing on imagination, vernacular artifacts, folk art and art historical sources.Yau, John. "With an Eye to Our Common Future," Hyperallergic, December 18, 2016. Retrieved July 17, 2018.Farago, Jason. "John Dilg’s landscapes know the power of a whisper," The New York Times, p. C12, July 9, 2021. Retrieved October 12, 2023.McQuaid, Cate. "'This Land’ is small land," The Boston Globe, December 31, 2013, p. G3–4. Retrieved July 17, 2018. Critics describe them as dreamlike ruminations on place, the fragility of nature, the collective unconscious and mystical storytelling.Johnson, Ken. "Art Guide – Galleries: Soho," The New York Times, March 24, 2000. Retrieved July 17, 2018.Higashino, Yuki. "John Dilg, Galerie Eva Presenhuber," Artforum, April, 2023. Retrieved October 12, 2023.Block, Louis. "John Dilg: Flight Path," The Brooklyn Rail, July–August 2021. Retrieved October 12, 2023.Wilson, Michael. "John Dilg Speaks to Michael Wilson," New American Paintings, August–September, 2016. Retrieved July 17, 2018. Precedents for his work that have been cited include 19th-century Romanticism landscape painters, Marsden Hartley, Georgia O’Keeffe and Horace Pippin, and the imaginary vistas of Henri Rousseau.
In 2016, John Yau wrote that Dilg's landscapes, "arise out of the collision of observation and memory, things seen and the history of painting remembered," evoking an "otherworldly hush and reverence." Curator Terri C. Smith wrote, "Dilg makes objects that are at once naïve and sophisticated, familiar and enigmatic. The tension in the paintings between known and unknown, fine art and found art along with their small scale encourages a very intimate, personal viewing experience."Smith, Terri C. "John Dilg and Karsten Krejcarek," Exhibition essay, New York: Regina Rex, 2013. Retrieved July 17, 2018.
Dilg was a professor in the School of Art and Art History at the University of Iowa for over four decades, before retiring as Professor Emeritus in 2017.Zevitas, Steven. "You Had Me at Hello: 150 Contemporary Artworks That Altered My Consciousness - Part 1," New American Paintings, January 2018. Retrieved July 17, 2018.University of Iowa. "John Dilg, Professor Emeritus," People. Retrieved July 17, 2018. He lives in Iowa City, and is married to Jan Weissmiller, poet and owner of Prairie Lights Books. The Daily Palette. "Jan Weissmiller," The University of Iowa. Retrieved July 17, 2018.Berg, Zach. "The 40-year history of Prairie Lights bookstore, an Iowa literary institution," Iowa City Press-Citizen, May 29, 2018. Retrieved July 17, 2018. His work belongs to the public art collections of the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago,Lanyon, Ellen. "Seven by Nine Times Two," Art Journal, Summer, 1980, p. 276-278. Retrieved July 17, 2018. Museu d'Art Contemporani Vicente Aguilera Cerni (Spain) and Saint Louis Art Museum, among others.
Dilg's earliest work consisted of large, gestural, Abstract Expressionist canvasses. By the 1980s, his paintings featured more regular, dark lines separating abstract planes of color that engaged the picture edges; writers compared them to the work of Richard Diebenkorn and—despite their abstraction—to the quirkier Chicago Imagists.Firestone, Evan, "Landscape and Abstraction," in Abstracted Landscape: Four Iowa Painters (Catalogue), Ames, IA: Octagon Center for the Arts, 1986. During this period, he exhibited solo at Roy Boyd Gallery in Chicago (1978–83)Queen, Larry. "John Dilg, Gordon Powell," New Art Examiner, November 1983. and in group shows at the Smithsonian Institution, Butler Institute of American Art, Joslyn Art Museum, Indianapolis Museum of Art, and N.A.M.E. Gallery, among others.Findsen, Owen. "Art," The Cincinnati Enquirer, September 21, 1980, p. F-9.Hayakawa, Alan. "Dilg Paintings Play Around Edges of Representation," The Oregonian, September 25, 1982, p. E7.Nugent, Bob L. Chicago Abstract Painting (Catalogue, traveling exhibition), Rohnert Park, CA: Sonoma State University Art Gallery, 1982.
In the late 1980s, Dilg began a decade-long shift toward more restrained flat surfaces and simpler, centralized compositions. A solo exhibition at the Evanston Art Center in 1996 marked his transition from purely formal concerns towards narrative and vaguely referential forms.Artner, Alan G. "Season Preview," Chicago Tribune, September 10, 1995. This work brought him greater attention, including representation by Luise Ross Gallery in New York and shows there (e.g., at Andrea Rosen Gallery, Sikkema Jenkins & Co. and Jeff Bailey Gallery) and elsewhere.Leffingwell, Edward. "John Dilg at Luise Ross," Art in America, June 2002, p. 125. Retrieved July 17, 2018.Lockwood, Wes. "Patient Process," New Art Examiner, May–June 2001, p. 101.Suhre, Terry, Perfect Memories (catalogue), St. Louis, MO: University of Missouri-St. Louis, Gallery 210, 2001.Jeff Bailey Gallery. "John Dilg," Artists. Retrieved August 5, 2019.
In the 2000s, Dilg shifted to small, exactingly composed paintings of iconic, glyph-like forms that ranged from fully abstract shapes to barely recognizable animals and landscape elements, as in Hide (2001); New York Times critic Ken Johnson described them as exuding "a modest archetypal mystery." This work increasingly referenced vernacular sources, reflecting Dilg's interests in the function of the souvenir as a carrier of recollected times, events and stories.Wright, Lesley. "John Dilg," in Patient Process (Catalogue), Grinnell, IA: Grinnell College, Faulconer Gallery, 2001.
Since 2000, Dilg has had solo exhibitions at the Figge Art MuseumFigge Art Museum. " John Dilg: Arterial Resources," Exhibitions. Retrieved July 29, 2018. and Rhodes College (Memphis), and galleries including Galerie Eva Presenhuber (New York/Vienna, 2021–3),Yau, John. Flight Path, New York: Galerie Eva Presenhuber, 2021. Retrieved October 12, 2023.Evans, Franklin. Leaving the New World, New York: Galerie Eva Presenhuber, 2023. Retrieved October 12, 2023. Regina Rex and Luise Ross (2000–11) in New York,Johnson, Stacey. Review (Luise Ross Gallery exhibition), MAKE Magazine, 2011. Retrieved July 17, 2018.Regina Rex. "John Dilg and Karsten Krejcarek," Exhibitions. Retrieved July 17, 2018. Taymour Grahne (London/New York),Taymour Grahne. "Natural Memory, John Dilg," Exhibitions. Retrieved July 17, 2018. Steven Zevitas (Boston),Steven Zevitas Gallery. "John Dilg,". Artists. Retrieved July 17, 2018. Steve Turner Gallery (Los Angeles), Devening Projects (Chicago),Yau, John. "The Studio Visit That Wasn’t Exactly a Studio Visit: Dan Devening, Mie Kongo, Peter Shear," Hyperallergic, February 19, 2017. Retrieved July 17, 2018. National Exemplar (Iowa City), and Schmidt Contemporary Art (St. Louis).Bonetti, David. "John Dilg: Recent Work," St. Louis Post-Dispatch, January 27, 2008 . Retrieved July 17, 2018. Writers John Yau and Steven Zevitas contend that the late-career national recognition Dilg has received was overdue, the delay a likely result of his (in Yau's words) residing in a "fly-over state."
Dilg applies his paints with a flat, dry, scumbled approach, seamlessly layering thin color gradations over charcoal-line drawings that often reveal hints of underpainting to create a halo-effect around his forms. He allows the rough weave of the canvas to show through, which gives the paintings a nubby, fresco-like materiality as well as an almost pixelated appearance.Devening Projects. "John Dilg," Artists. Retrieved July 17, 2018. Dilg works with a subtly shifting, restricted palette of celadon greens, pale blues, and sandy or greyed browns that has been described as evoking Midwest prairies, the veiled light created by misty Pacific Northwest rains, and deep geologic time.Cooper, Ivy. "John Dilg: Recent Paintings," Riverfront Times, May 5, 2004. Retrieved July 17, 2018.Butcher, Dwayne. "Painter’s Painter: Work by John Dilg at Clough-Hanson," Memphis Flyer, November 22, 2012. Retrieved July 17, 2018. New York Times critic Jason Farago wrote that this restrained tonal range called to mind the color approaches of Giorgio Morandi, Agnes Martin and Luc Tuymans, as well as classical Korean ceramics.
Critics have characterized Dilg's mature work as enigmatic, "quasi-mystical" and deliberative.Davis, Maggie. "'Soft Eyes' group show hovers between familiar and strange, at Whitespace," ArtsAtlanta, September 3, 2015. Retrieved July 17, 2018. The Boston Globe
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