Tag: realism

Alex Blas

Alex Blas, “Day Off #1″, 2006, Oil on Canvas

Alex Blas was born in 1978 in Mexico City, emigrated to the United States in 1988 and received his degree in 1999 from Santa Ana College. His work has been shown at the Lyons Weir Gallery, New York, and the George Billis Gallery, Los Angeles, as well as Manifest Equality (Los Angeles) and at Legends of La Cienega, sponsored by Elle Décor magazine. He currently lives and works in Los Angeles and curates Artwerq at the Downtown LA Artwalk monthly.

Using his personal friends and real life experiences as inspiration for his subject matter, his large-scale oil paintings capture people in private moments; solo figures behaving as they do when no one is watching. In his three series: “Housesitter“, “Day Off” and “Friends“, Blas voyeuristic perspective turns the viewer into a fly on the wall, making us witness to personal indiscretions, pleasures and self-indulgence such as selfies, watching porn, masturbating, playing video games, talking on the phone and napping.

Brett Reichman

The Artwork of Brett Reichman

Brett Reichman is an Associate Professor at the San Francsco Art Institute where he teaches in both the graduate and undergraduate programs. Born in Pittsburgh PA, he has lived and worked in San Francisco since 1984. His work came to fruition in the late 1980s out of cultural activism that addressed the AIDS epidemic and gay identity politics and was curated into early exhibitions that acknowledged those formative issues.

Reichman’s inquiry into the politics of gay culture critiques political correctness and cultural assimilation, however the approach to realism is never simply reproductive. He separates the concept of Realism from Naturalism within a discourse that views popular culture as anxious, obsessed with artificiality and unnatural beauty. His pictures take lubricious fantasy to the point of ridicule, without losing completely a quotient of psychological truth. Often, his works include that of which he collects: mid-century modern furniture and dinnerware. The aesthetics of these mid-century items are often present in his representations of non-normative contemporary gay domestic space.

Wim Heleens

Wim Heleens, “Unexpected” Oil on Canvas, 2009

The work of Wim Heldens occupies an individual place in the contemporary art scene of the Netherlands. Understanding that the re-emergence of realist art as a counter movement to modernism was opening-up new perspectives, and realising that his main interest was the human condition and life as it unfolded around him, he quickly discovered that his talents could best develop in the portrait genre and the context of ordinary life, thereby picking-up an old Dutch tradition. But although much of his technique is traditional, the imagery is contemporary, and it is in this combination of the ‘old’ and the ‘new’ that Heldens found his originality.

Viktor Popkov

Viktor Popkov, “The Builders of Bratsk”, 1960, Oil on Canvas

Bratsk was Hydropower Station. Its construction symbolized the power of Soviet economics and development of industrialization. The builders were considered to be new heroes of the Communist epoch. This painting is a representative of the so-called “severe style” of socialist realism.

Viktor Popkov was one of the most celebrated Soviet artists during Krushschev’s Thaw. Perhaps it is for this reason – that he was recognized and not considered an underground artist – that he is less well known, and less appreciated outside Russia than many of his peers.

Popkov’s diverse, stylistic periods had a wide range, from 1950s Socialist Realism, through the “Severe” or “Austere Style” which he helped create in the 1960s, to his late “Philosophical-Romantic” phase. There is a fascinating progression from the dynamism of his early works to more contemplative figures.

The “Builders of the Bratsk” (1960) is an icon of the severe style. The workers stand or crouch against an uncompromising, dark background, a group of individuals with their own emotions, but a common goal.The Tretyakov Gallery   bought the painting when Popkov was 28 years old.

Kevin Sloan

Paintings by Kevin Sloan

Kevin Sloan currently lives and work in Denver, Colorado. Kevin received a Bachelor of Fine Arts in Painting in 1981 from Tyler School of Art of Temple University, Philadelphia, PA. He then went on to study for his Master of Fine Arts at the University of Arizona, Tucson, which he was awarded in 1984. Kevin has since built up a huge following of patrons, has exhibited his work in countless galleries, in both solo and group exhibits and has had his work published in numerous publications.

Kevin Sloan’s ‘Allegorical Realism’ occupies a fascinating territory where the natural world and humanity’s cultural contributions collide. The deliberately awkward interchanges that occur give rise to relationships which at first may strike us as unbalanced, although on closer inspection display a nebulous harmony. Conversations are opened concerning how we interact with nature and the implications of our technological advancements on the environment we share with the rest of the animal kingdom.

Sloan masterfully utilises a broad swathe of universal, contemporary and personal symbolism in the construction of his narratives, thus allowing our own intellect and experience the freedom to extract relevant meaning from the beautiful mysteries on display.

Cesar Santos

Cesar Santos, “The Restorers”, Oil on Linen, 29 x 39 Inches

Cesar Santos’s art education is worldly, and his work has been seen around the globe, from the Annigoni Museum in Italy and the Beijing museum in China to Chelsea NY. Santos studied at Miami Dade College, where he earned his associate in arts degree in 2003. He then attended the New World School of the Arts before traveling to Florence, Italy. In 2006, Santos  completed the Angel Academy of Art in Florence studying under Michael John Angel, a student of artist Pietro Annigoni.

Santos’ work reflects both classical and modern interpretations juxtaposed within one painting. His influences range from the Renaissance to the masters of the nineteenth century to Contemporary Art. With superb technique, he infuses a harmony between the natural and the conceptual to create works that are provocative and dramatic.

David Inshaw

Seven Landscapes  by David Inshaw

Born in Wednesfield, Straffordshire, England, David Inshaw is a British artist who sprang to public attention in 1973 when his painting The Badminton Game (bottom image) was exhibited at the ICA Summer Studio exhibition in London. The painting was subsequently acquired by the Tate Gallery and is one of several paintings from the 1970s that won him critical acclaim and a wide audience.

David Inshaw studied at Beckenham School of Art in 1959–63 and the Royal Academy Schools in 1963-66. A teaching post at the West of England College of Art, Bristol, in 1966–75 was followed by a two-year fellowship in Creative Art at Trinity College in Cambridge. Inshaw moved to Devizes, Wiltshire, in 1971 and formed the Broadheath Brotherhood with Graham and Ann Arnold in 1972. The three artists were joined by Peter Blake, Jann Haworth, and Graham and Annie Ovenden in 1975, when the group was renamed the Brotherhood of the Ruralists.

Stephen Greene

Stephen Greene, “The Mourners”, Oil on Canvas, 1946, 50.8 x 76.2 cm, Private Collection

Stephen Greene was a painter from Valley Cottage, New York, known for his abstract paintings and in the 1940′s for his social realist figure paintings. Greene taught at Princeton University for many years where he was teacher to many well-known figures in the art world including Frank Stella and art critic and historian Michael Fried.

Greene had more than 2 dozen solo exhibitions of his work in leading art galleries in New York City. He also taught at the Art Students League of New York for several decades. After the mid-1950s and until his death Greene’s mature work was related to abstract expressionism, color field painting and surrealism.

“I have always wanted to achieve a profoundly moving image, to make of paint and canvas a visual fact worth dealing with on many levels. Art does set up a particular world and the one that suits my vision of what I see, know, deals with the dark side of experience as well as its enchantment and pleasures. In art, our hopes and desires shape our visions of fulfillment for more than the actual experiences that we may have.

My use of color and light that is mysterious is of an interior perception. My formal stance is very much involved with an underlying structure that is insistent to the life of the work. I remain subject ridden and how a vertical divides the space from top to bottom, from my earliest works to the present, is as much subject matter as overt reference to the known world. I prefer to make paintings that are sufficiently individual to be granted their own place.”                            — Stephen Greene, Valley Cottage, New York, 1999.

David Kassan

David Kassan, “Self Portrait in Motion, Oil on Panel, 2010, 101,6 x 66 cm, Private Collection

David Jon Kassan is a contemporary realist painter best known for his life-size realist portraits. The paintings combine figurative subjects with abstract background textures he says are inspired by such painters as Franz Kline and Robert Rauschenberg. Kassan says, “my effort to constantly learn to document reality with a naturalistic, representational painting technique allows for pieces to be inherent contradictions; paintings that are both real and abstract.”

David Kassan currently lives and works in Brooklyn, New York, and teaches painting classes and workshops at various institutions around the world. He received his B.F.A. in 1999 from Syracuse University, Syracuse, NY where he studied with Jerome Witkin. He continued his studies at The National Academy, and the Art Students League of New York, both in Manhattan. He is currently represented by Gallery Henoch in New York

Alex Roulette

Alex Roulette, “Unknown Lights”, 2010, Oil on Panel, 114.3 x 91.4 cm, Private Collection

At the core of Alex Roulette’s photo-realistic painting practice is an exploration of the process of male coming-of-age in contemporary American society. Emotionally, his work is intended to oscillate between an uneasy psychological isolation and the promise of adventure waiting at the horizon. Rooted firmly in both personal history and established cultural paradigms, he strives to present an honest and poignant tableau of adolescent transformation.

Consciously emulating the cinematographic mode, Roulette’s compositions could be stills from the ‘buddy films’ with which the artist identifies. In particular, he is concerned with the journeys from dystopia toward an imagined utopia that the male characters of such films undertake.

This past year, Alex Roulette had a solo exhibition called Fabricated Realism at the George Billis Gallery in New York in which this  2010 painting was shown. His work continues to have great aesthetic appeal and in 2010, Alex played more with unusual light sources and effects in his work. Sun flares, reflections, snowflakes and other natural and fabricated lighting replaces the strong shadows prevalent in his 2007-2008 work.

Arantzazu Martinez

Arantzazu Martinez, “The Fallen Angel”, Oil on Linen, 45 x 29 Inches, , Museo Europeo de Arte Modemo

Arantzazu Martinez is a Spanish artist who received her BFA at the Fine Arts University of the Basque Country. She later attended the New York Academy of Figurative Art for her classical art training. She currently resides and works in Madrid, traveling often back to New York. Martinez has recently exhibited her work in New York at the 2019 IBEX Masters Exhibition, the largest showing of super-realistic, figurative, contemporary art in the world.

Francisco de Zubaran

Francisco de Zubaran, “Agnus Dei”, 1635-40, Oil on Canvas, 62 x 38 cm, Museo Nacional del Prado

Francisco de Zurbarán was a Spanish painter. He is known primarily for his religious paintings depicting monks, nuns, and martyrs, and for his still-lifes. Zurbarán gained the nickname Spanish Caravaggio, owing to the forceful, realistic use of chiaroscuro in which he excelled.

It is unknown whether Zurbarán had the opportunity to copy the paintings of Caravaggio; at any rate, he adopted Caravaggio’s realistic use of chiaroscuro and tenebrism. The painter who may have had the greatest influence on his characteristically severe compositions was Juan Sánchez Cotán. Polychrome sculpture—which by the time of Zurbarán’s apprenticeship had reached a level of sophistication in Seville that surpassed that of the local painters—provided another important stylistic model for the young artist

Francisco de Zurbarán created a pure and intense religious visual language. He worked in Seville in the days when the Andalucían city created its renowned Holy Week rituals. In Zubaran’s painting “Agnus Dei”, a trussed lamb, bound for death, symbolises Christ.

Luigi Benedicenti

Realism:  Paintings by Luigi Benedicenti

The work of Benedicenti is deeply rooted in the still-life tradition that sprouted in Europe in the late XVI century, embodied by such masters as Bosschaert the Elder and Bruegel the Elder, whose accurately descriptive paintings were often employed for scientific purposes. Notwithstanding Luigi Benedicenti has a strong independent personality which cannot be fully explained through the prism of his precursors.

After having deeply meditated on their works, absorbed the symbolic value, Luigi moved away from this genre. He came up with a completely new style, what the critic Claudio Malberti defined as ‘Realismo Estremo’ or ‘Extreme Realism’. Benedicenti replaces the fish and meat that used to decorate the dining rooms of the leisure class with contemporary Italian patisserie, ice cream and classy drinks.

Henrik Arrested Uldalen

Paintings by Henrik Arrested Uldalen

The Norwegian artist Henrik Aarrestad Uldalen combines the skills of a classical figurative painter with a contemporary approach. His work depicts people in dream-like states of floating or swimming, peacefully engaged in their inner thoughts. His realistic approach captures the human form with a surreal atmosphere, reflecting the tranquility that his models are experimenting. His work does not intend to capture photographic realism but rather an emotional realism that conveys the moment of floating in nothingness.