Corbett vs. Dempsey

works by Ronald Ahlström

Born in 1922, native Chicagoan Ronald Ahlström graduated from the School of the Art Institute, where he frequently exhibited his collages and paintings in the Chicago and Vicinity exhibits of the 1950s and 1960s. He also showed at Exhibition Momentum in the '60s, and was selected for the Corcoran Biennial. Together with his colleagues and fellow-abstractionists Robert Nickle, Morris Barazani, Harry Bouras, George Kokines, and George Waite, he exhibited at M cCormick Place in an independently produced survey of contemporary Chicagoans, circa 1962, under the banner 12 Chicago Artists. An adept and sensitive painter, Ahlström's most personal work is as an abstract expressionist collage maker. Using strips of paper, sometimes weathered and beaten into rough hewn surfaces, he creates immaculately layered, lively, gestural compositions.