Perhaps it was possible, even then, to sense that Jesus of Western Avenue, inaugurated on October 16, 2021, at the Cleve Carney Museum of Art (College of DuPage, Glen Ellyn, Illinois), would become Tony Fitzpatrick’s final solo exhibition in his lifetime. The show gathered more than sixty recent works, reaffirming his—almost proverbial—fascination with Chicago’s urban nature and environment, expressed through his unmistakably personal graphic language.

A central figure in Chicago’s artistic landscape, Tony Fitzpatrick passed away at sixty-six on October 11. He was an artist, printmaker, poet, writer, actor, gallerist, and tireless advocate for his native city. Multiple reports indicate that he died of a heart attack at Rush University Medical Center in Chicago while awaiting a double-lung transplant.

His distinct graphic presence acknowledged the legacy of the Chicago Imagists of an earlier generation—artists such as Christina Ramberg, Ray Yoshida, and Roger Brown. Fitzpatrick’s visual work embraced collage, printmaking, and painting, masterfully weaving together vintage illustrations and the visual vocabulary of tattoo art: words, numbers, musical notations, and, often, drawings of flowers, dogs, and birds.

Writing in The New York Times, critic Roberta Smith once observed:

“On the surface, these dense mixtures of words and images are nothing new; in fact, they can seem almost nostalgic. But they can win you over with their emotion and erudition, illuminating both the greatness of Chicago and its physical solidity.”

Fitzpatrick was also an ardent supporter of other artists. Over the years he directed several galleries in Chicago, including The Edge, World Tattoo—where he once performed with the legendary punk band The Mekons—and The Dime. His most recent book, The Sun at the End of the Road: Dispatches From an American Life, was, as he told Block Club Chicago, an attempt to counter Donald Trump’s recent depiction of Chicago as “a hellhole.”

He was an artist who, through his own narrative, questioned the hierarchies between high culture and popular culture. Fitzpatrick celebrated Chicago’s popular life—its music, neighborhoods, and history—raising them to the level of universal myth. All his work was animated by the intensity of a citizen deeply conscious of his surroundings, of his city’s memory, and of the cultural tensions that shaped him.

At a time when ambition and logic push artists to pursue global reach, Fitzpatrick remained steadfastly loyal to his own ground. He worked from Chicago and for Chicago, with a voice unmistakably local. That fidelity endowed his practice with an ethical and political dimension, placing him among those creators who understand art as a form of belonging—and of commitment.

Tony Fitzpatrick (Chicago, 1958 – 2025) was a self-taught American artist, poet, and actor. In 1992, he founded the print studio Big Cat Press in Chicago, from which he expanded his distinctive visual language. His work is part of major collections, including those of the Art Institute of Chicago and the Museum of Modern Art in New York.