10 х 8 in. cm.
Signed, and dated, "ESTES 08", lower left.
This untitled urban painting by artist Richard Estes portrays a passing glimpse of the Woolworth Building in downtown Manhattan from a bus-side window. Estes is known as a preeminent Photorealist painters. His urban landscapes lend a clarification to the visual noise experienced by urban dwellers in buildings and store fronts. Along with the additional issue or transitioning from one place to another, this urban painting concerns a clarification of space. Garnered from his photographs, it reflects the spatial relationships of a specific environment. Estes creates it however, in a way that only partially addresses the way we are able to view it in reality. The artist's detailed focus on the complex components that make up the city narrative captured in this painting, i.e., its light, the structural components of urban architecture, and its many faceted reflections, is unparalleled in our times.
Considered a founder of the 1960s photorealist movement, the work of Richard Estes (b. 1932) focuses on reflections and minute details, capturing complex geometric arrangements found within the urban and natural environments he studies. Like Audrey Flack, Chuck Close, Denis Peterson, Duane Hanson, Ralph Goings and other realist artists, Estes paints from photographic stills rather than from life, in order to capture the elusive and photographic quality of light. Maintaining a distinct aesthetic that is at once realistic and disconcerting, his subjects include storefronts, mass transit, city dwellers, and natural scenes including Antarctic and New England landscapes. The artist studied at the Art Institute of Chicago (Chicago, IL) and has exhibited at numerous venues internationally including recent shows at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum (New York, NY), National Museum of Contemporary Art (Deoksugung, Korea), Marlborough Gallery (New York, NY), and a retrospective held at the Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza (Madrid, Spain), among others.
Select Public Collections:
Museum of Modern Art (New York, NY)
Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum (New York, NY)
Whitney Museum of America Art (New York, NY)
National Gallery of Art (Washington, DC)
Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden (Washington, DC)
Art Institute of Chicago (Chicago, IL)
Museum of Fine Arts (Boston, MA)
National Academy Museum And School Of Fine Arts (New York, NY)
Indianapolis Museum of Art (Indianapolis, IN)
Tate Gallery (London, UK)
Teheran Museum of Contemporary Art (Teheran, Iran)
Ludwig Múzeum (Budapest, Hungary)
Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza (Madrid, Spain)