Ed Paschke, 65; Artist Explored Garish Realism, Computer Images

Ed Paschke, the Chicago-based painter who made provocative portraits of seamy urban realism and later created haunting simulated electronic images, has died. He was 65.

Paschke died Nov. 25 in his sleep at the Chicago home he shared with his daughter, Sharon. She said that he had been under treatment for a mild heart murmur and that heart problems ran in the family.

Educated at the Art Institute of Chicago, Paschke gained attention in the 1960s with his lurid, reality-based abstract portraits of strippers, pimps and other denizens of Chicago’s grittiest bars. His paintings were often described as garish, disturbing or confrontational, and he liked that just fine.

“People have either really liked what I’ve done, or they’ve hated it,” he told the Christian Science Monitor in 1990. “And both of those reactions are gratifying to me.”

That year, the Art Institute presented a one-man retrospective of Paschke’s work, which had previously been shown in Paris. His earliest solo exhibition was in Chicago in 1970, and a second was staged in Paris in 1974.

In the late 1970s, Paschke became concerned that his earliest paintings, although considered sensational on first impression, had little lasting impact. So he began experimenting with simulated electronic images, creating unusual portraits of subjects from Abraham Lincoln to Elvis Presley.

When he introduced 10 paintings at the Dorothy Goldeen Gallery in Santa Monica in 1992, a Times reviewer said Paschke began with facial images taken from 1940s fashion magazines, then drew, or, in his words, “editorialized,” on top of them. With black paint, he re-created the edited image on white canvas, and added colored layers.

“One is at once put off and drawn into these creatures of hollow beauty,” the reviewer wrote.

Times art writer Suzanne Muchnic, reviewing a 1988 exhibit of Paschke’s paintings at the same gallery, said he had “transcended his reputation as a kinky Pop regionalist.”

In addition to the Art Institute, Paschke taught at Columbia College in Chicago, and was an instructor at Northwestern University for more than 25 years.

Instilled with a working-class ethic by his father, Paschke painted six days a week and spent the seventh making drawings. He was known and greatly admired for generously helping younger artists and for donating works to charity events.

Paschke was also devoted to his family, paying daily visits to his wife, Nancy, at the nursing home where she had been for 12 years because of Parkinson’s disease.

In addition to his daughter and his wife, he is survived by his mother, Waldrine; a son, Marc, and a brother, Richard.