Ida Applebroog: Angry Birds of America

New York artist Ida Applebroog (born 1929) began making her Angry Birds series as a result of an effort to draw birds nestling in trees. Quickly realizing that scientific ornithological draftsmen work from dead models, she and her studio began producing their own models in plaster and paint. The artist states of this work, I started calling them Angry Birds of America. It was just something that stuck in my head. And then I realized I was in the middle of the Trump era. There was a lot of anger, not just me, but all over America. My feeling was, whatever I was doing, it had to do with angry, dead birds. For whatever it’s worth, I feel like I’m living in a world where we’re all very, very angry.
Ida Applebroog: Angry Birds of America also presents the series Mercy Hospital, which she executed during her stay in a psychiatric clinic during 1969-70, and which was rediscovered in 2009.