Dear Max Beckmann

Nicola Tyson was born in 1960 in London, England and currently lives and works in upstate New York. Primarily known as an inventive figurative painter – expressing her feminist concerns and drive for creative authority through a personal and intuitive approach – Tyson has also worked with photography, film, performance and the written word. Drawing forms an important part of her practice and it is from these delicate, visceral investigations that she develops her chromatically intense and psychologically charged paintings.

In 2013 Tyson released the limited edition book Dead Letter Men, a collection of satirical letter, to famous dead male artists, in which she weaves together sexual politics, autobiography and art history, to explain – from an oblique angle – how her own work evolved. The book was designed by Peter Miles and published by Petzel Gallery, New York and Sadie Coles HQ, London. 

Lisa Klinger