Tag: realism

Norbet Bisky

Paintings by Norbet Bisky

Norbert Bisky is a German painter based in Berlin, best known for his frescos depicting adolescents. He was born at Leipzig in the former German Democratic Republic. The son of a Communist official, he grew up in a home in which Communism assumed the power of a religion. He studied from the mid-1990s at the Hochschule der Künste where he was a master student of Georg Baselitz in Berlin and at the Salzburg Summer Academy in the class of Jim Dine.

His work is greatly influenced by the socialist realism which was the official art of the GDR. In recent years he has shifted to darker themes of disaster, disease and decapitation while retaining the consummate painterliness which is the hallmark of his work. His figures, in many cases are floating, falling, tumbling, without any gravitational axis. The tumult surrounding the figures is punctuated by the cross pollination of cues from Christian ideology, art history, gay culture, pornography and apocalyptic visions. Bisky transmits an impression of instability on the canvas that distinctly resonates with our contemporary state of affairs.

Konstantinos Kyrtis

Five Oil Paintings by Konstantinos Kyrtis

Konstantinos Kyrtis was born in Nicosia, the Capital of Cypress, and studied painting and drawing at Laguna College of Art & Design (LCAD), California, USA. His work was exhibited in solo and group shows in Cyprus, USA and UK. His achievements include consecutive ‘Best of Fine Art’ Awards at LCAD and Young Artist of Cyprus Award.

Kyrtis’ work is influenced by the techniques and concepts of the Baroque Era and 19th century Realism as applied to contemporary visual aesthetics.

Carl Dobsky

Carl Dobsky, “Ship of Fools”, 2014-2015, Oil on Canvas, 72 x 108 Inches

Carl Dobsky, a realist artist who is also the proprietor of the Los Angeles based Safehouse Atelier, showed his recent six-by-nine-foot canvas “Ship of Fools” at John Pence Gallery in June 2015.

“The theme for the work has been around for a long time, but kind of comes into it’s own in the 15th and 16th centuries with works by the likes of Hieronymous Bosch and others. It usually depicts a boat without a pilot filled with deranged or people who are kind of oblivious to their situation. In some cases, it has been used as social commentary.                                                  To

I wanted to show them in a situation where they were caught between an ideal vision and a practical situation. In this case, the practical situation is obvious enough; they’re about to wash up into the rocks if they can’t take care of matters at hand. To show the vision of the ideal, I chose the symbol of the butterfly for it’s delicate and fragile beauty. The thought to use butterflies came to me after reading about Chuang Tzu’s dream where his identity becomes interchangeable with the butterfly.” – Carl Dobsky

David Ligare

Paintings by David Ligare

David Ligare is an American contemporary realist painter. Contemporary Realism is an approach that uses straightforward representation but is different from photorealism in that it does not exaggerate and is non-ironic in nature.

“I think that I’m very Californian in the character of the light that I use, but I made a decision very early on in my project to try to be an invisible presence in my work. Personal expression and having a personal style are very important to many artists but I’ve been much more interested in how we see – what I call perceptual analysis – and the potential meanings of the objects that I’ve depicted.” – David Ligare

Stanislav Putenko

Stanislav Putenko, “The Procession”, 2014

Stanislav Plutenko is a prominent Moscow artist-realist. His signature method — a mixed technique employing oil, tempera, acrylic and watercolor — is skilfully supplemented with masterfully airbrushing and glazing with clear paints.

Stanislav Plutenko belongs to the fine tradition of late USSR/early Russia period in which The Leningrad School of Painting/Fine Arts predominated. This prestigious school inherited from the reformed Imperial Academy of Fine Arts of Czarist Russia. The Leningrad School was held as a major phenomenon of artistic life in the USSR. It left a mark on Mr. Plutenko. His art exudes the gravity of Leningrad artistry, a sense of mission to create works of public importance, the culture of professional excellence, the exquisite harmony of color and a generalized interest in painting and figurative images.

Alex Seton

Alex Seton, Carrara Marble Sculptures, “Soft from Hard”

Marble as a medium has been used since ancient days, reaching perhaps its height of perfection during the Roman era – with finely carved busts of gods and man. The material has an almost magic quality, able to reproduce the forms of other materials in convincing detail, texture and form – but it’s never been used for sculptures like these before. Alex Seton, a Sydney-based artist, has been reproducing everyday goods, from t-shirts and sweatshirts, to full track suits.

Seton’s sculptures embody a strange niche between the classic and the modern, at once paying tribute to the sculptures of the past, and simultaneously bringing the form into the ethos of the present. Each piece reproduces inexpensive everyday goods, raising them to an unusual level of idolization, and at the same time raising questions about our pre-conceived notion of how this medium should be used. Each sculpture is realized with the utmost detail; each fold and seam is accurately reproduced with such perfection that it is nearly impossible to tell the reproduction from reality… except one is soft and warm, the other hard and cold.

Paul Hannon

Paintings by Paul Hannon

Born in 1952, Paul Hannon is an American born artist, who lives in Halifax, Nova Scotia, where he paints urban and coastal scenes of Atlantic Canada. Hannon’s primary interest lies in the observation of light and its influence on form within the landscape. He responds to low-angled, northern light with long, deep shadows, and the depiction of this light plays a critical role in creating the mood of his narrative urban portraits.

Hannon cites Edward Hopper as a significant influence, and his painting practice follows the tradition of the Ashcan School of Art, an art movement best know for a style of oil painting that portrayed the realism of everyday life in New York.

Bo Bartlett

Three Paintings by Bo Bartlett

Bo Bartlett is an American realist painter with a modernist vision. His paintings are within the tradition of American realism as defined by artists such as Thomas Eakins and Andrew Wyeth. Like these artists, Bartlett looks at America’s  land and its people, describing the beauty in everyday life.

Bartlett was educated at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, where realist principles must be grasped before modernist ventures are encouraged. He pushes the boundaries of the realist tradition with his multilayered imagery. The paintings’ scenes represent a deep, mythical concept of the archetypal, universal home.

Images from top to bottom: “Lifeboat”, 1998, Oil on Linen, 80 x 100; “Bone”, 2000, Oil on Linen, 86 x 100; “Leviathan”, 2000, Oil on Linen, 89 x 138

Shane Wolf

The Artwork of Shane Wolf

Born in 1976 in Cincinnati, Ohio, Shane Wolf, after receiving his BA in design in 2000, joined Salomon SAS in Annecy, France, as a graphic designer. In 2004 Wolf embarked on a 16-month trip around the world, keeping a drawing journal of his travels, which led him to Florence, birth place of the Italian Renaissance.

From 2005 to 2009, Wolf began passionately studying art at the Angel Academy of Art located in Florence. He explored the fundamental drawing and painting techniques used by the Old Masters since the Renaissance. Wolf received his Diploma of Excellence and achieved a teacher position at the Angel Academy which specializes in classic, realist painting.

In 2010, Wolf relocated to Paris where he now lives and works, driven by a vital desire to draw and share the ideals which the human form inspires in him. He won numerous prizes in the following six years and participated in many solo and group exhibitions in Europe and the United States. Wolf’s talent has attracted the keen interest of collectors and museums that acquire and follow his evolving art.