Richard Estes
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Richard Estes (born May 14, 1932 in Kewanee, Illinois) is
an American painter who is best known for his photorealistic
paintings. The paintings generally consist of reflective,
clean, and inanimate city and geometric landscapes. He is
regarded as one of the founders of the international
photo-realist movement of the late 1960s, with painters such
as Ralph Goings, Chuck Close, and Duane Hanson.
At an early age, Richard's family moved to Chicago. As a
young adult, Richard studied fine arts at The School of the
Art Institute of Chicago. He frequently studied the works of
realist painters such as Edgar Degas, Edward Hopper, and
Thomas Eakins, who are strongly represented in the Art
Institute's collection. Richard moved to New York City in
1956, after he had completed his course of studies, and
worked for the next ten years as a graphic artist for
various magazine publishers and advertising agencies in New
York and Spain. During this period, he painted in his spare
time. By 1966, he had the financial resources to devote
himself full-time to painting.
Most of Richard's paintings from the early 1960s are of
city dwellers engaged in everyday activities. Beginning
around 1967, Richard began to paint storefronts and
buildings with glass windows, and more importantly, the
reflected images shown on these windows. The paintings were
based on color photographs he would take, which trapped the
evanescent nature of the reflections, which would change in
part with the lighting and the time of day. While some
amount of alteration was done for the sake of aesthetic
composition, it was important to Richard that the central
and the main reflected objects be recognizable, but also
that the evanescent quality of the reflections be retained.
Richard had his first of many one-man shows in 1968, at the
Allan Stone Gallery. His works have also been exhibited at
the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Whitney Museum, and the
Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum. In 1971, Richard was granted a
National Council for the Arts fellowship.
