Presenting one of the Robert Longo’s most celebrated themes, the wave, this charcoal is a study for a larger work Longo created numerous charcoal renderings of waves in the early 2000s as part of his ‘Monsters’ series. Drawn to the power and ferocity of a breaking wave, Longo sourced images from his own photos and surfing magazines to fully appreciate their force, beauty, and magnitude, which he wonderfully captures in his dramatic black and white renderings.

Born and raised in New York, Robert Longo (b.1953) had a fascination with mass media, which would continue to influence his art. Longo became famous in 1981 with his first solo exhibition of his "Men in the Cities" series at Metro Pictures, New York, which illustrated businessmen (and women) in fluid movements intersected by architectural forms made of cast aluminum reliefs. Since then he often engaged his paintings with 3-dimensional materials. Longo earned his BFA in 1975 from the State University College, Buffalo, NY. He was one of the original founders (along with Diane Bertolo, Charles Clough, Nancy Dwyer, Cindy Sherman, and Michael Zwack) of the highly influential Hallwalls. He is a co-founder and member of the band X PATSYS (with Barbara Sukowa, Jon Kessler, Anthony Coleman, Anton Fier and Sean Conly). In 2009, the Musee d´Art Moderne et d`Art Contemporain Nice in Nice, France staged a major retrospective of Longo’s career from 1980-2009, which travelled to the Berardo Museum, Lisbon, Portugal in 2010. His work has also been the subject of recent solo shows at Galerie Thaddaeus Ropac, Paris, France (2011); Galería Soledad Lorenzo, Madrid, Spain (2011); Kunsthalle Weishaupt, Ulm, Germany (2010); and Metro Pictures Gallery, New York, NY (2009).

Longo is represented by Metro Pictures in New York City and Galerie Hans Mayer in Düsseldorf, Germany.

Selected Public Collections:

Museum of Modern Art, New York, NY
Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, NY
The Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, CA
Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago, IL
Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, MO
Tate Britain, London, UK
Centre Pompidou - Musée National d´Art Moderne, Paris, France
Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam, Netherlands
The Albertina, Vienna, Austria