2021 Figurative Viewing Room: https://www.nuartgallery.com/viewing-room/1/
For over 40,000 years artists have created figurative art. Cave dwellers drew pictures of animals and people. And, while we may never know what they meant to convey, their work demonstrates their interaction with the world around them. In the nineties and early 2000s, when I curated an acclaimed series of biennial exhibitions, Re-presenting Representation, I described “representation” (read “figurative”) as “stuff you can recognize.” Today, we continue with this tradition—the interplay between humans and their environment—with paintings not only representing the stuff you recognize, but also deeper meanings and associations that you will understand more slowly. For Nüart Gallery’s 2021 Figurative Invitational, I have selected pieces by artists from around the world—some of whom are already on the gallery’s roster. My criterion has been two-fold. First, staying true to the gallery’s twenty-year tradition of showing “the work of the very best artists we know from around the globe." Secondly, my own interest in artists—whose work is deeper than the surface and exemplifies their great skill—in addition to their subjects who demonstrate their curiosity, insight, and engagement with their surroundings. - John O’Hern, Santa Fe Editor International Artist Publishing and former Executive Director of the Arnot Art Museum
Michael Bergt is an internationally recognized figurative artist known for his mastery of a variety of media, from his renowned egg tempera paintings and pencil drawings to bronze sculpture. Ambiguity is a central tenent in his process and allows for reflection on the paradoxes of the human condition. Using diverse sources of visual cultures from the East to the West, Bergt’s work unites the two major themes of figurative art, the sensual and the spiritual into works of delicate mastery.
Michael Bergt has received numerous international awards, including one of his works being featured in the 2018 BP Portrait Award, the most prestigious painting competition in the world, at the National Portrait Gallery in London, as well as one of his works being selected for the “out of the box” category in the 2020 National Portrait Society of America competition.
Bergt has shown his work nationally and internationally for over forty years in numerous solo and group museum exhibitions including the Arnot Museum, Elmira, New York; Belvedere Place, Vienna, Austria; Center for Contemporary Arts, Santa Fe, New Mexico; de Young Museum, San Francisco, California; the Frye Art Museum, Seattle, Washinging; The Evansville Museum of Arts and Sciences, Evansville, Indiana; and Kalamazoo Institute of Art, Kalamazoo, Michigan. Michael Bergt’s paintings and sculptures have been featured in a multitude of publications, and have won numerous awards both domestically and abroad. His work is held in countless public and private collections, among them the: Fons D’Art del Diari Avui, Barcelona, Spain; de Young Museum, San Francisco, California; Arnot Art Museum in Elmira, New York; Frye Art Museum, Seattle, Washington; The Museum of New Mexico, Santa Fe, New Mexico; Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, Bentonville, Arkansas; and California Palace of the Legion of Honor; San Francisco, California.
Braldt Bralds is Dutch-born contemporary artist who is also internationally recognized for his award-winning illustration career. Since the 90s, Bralds has shifted his career from illustration to fine art. This work is found in private and public collections, including the Rockefeller Foundation’s permanent collection. Primarily self-taught, Bralds masterfully creates art that is “of this world, but not in this world.” His unique talent in paintings has ranged from realistic to humorous portrayals of animals to contemplative and detailed still lifes.
Bralds has exhibited his art at prestigious galleries, as well as group invitationals, around the world. His illustration work has appeared in such notable publications as Time, Newsweek, Omni, TV Guide, Rolling Stone, Der Spiegel, and National Geographic, among many others. He has illustrated book covers for such publishers as Alfred A. Knopf and Simon & Schuster. He has lectured and held workshops in cities all over the world, including Brussels, Tokyo and Seoul. Among his awards are three gold medals, three silver medals, and the Hamilton King Award from the Society of Illustrators. He has taught at New York’s School of Visual Arts and was an independent student counselor for their Masters Program. In March of 2021, Braldt received the crowning achievement for his former career, when he was inducted into the venerable Society of Illustrator’s Hall of Fame.
Alan Feltus was born in Washington, D.C. in 1943 and grew up in Manhattan. Feltus studied for one year at the Tyler School of Fine Arts in Philadelphia, and then received a BFA from Cooper Union in New York, and an MFA from Yale University. Since 1987, he has lived and worked in Italy. In his paintings, while working intuitively, he choreographs figures in enigmatic relationships, without referring to live models or preconceived concepts and compositional ideas. He creates a silence in his paintings and avoids specific meanings, believing that paintings “which are difficult or seemingly impossible to fully comprehend” are the most interesting.
Feltus has received many awards for his work that include the Rome Prize Fellowship, a National Endowment for the Arts Individual Grant in Painting, a Louis Comfort Tiffany Foundation Grant in Painting, two Pollock Krasner Foundation Grants in Painting, the Augustus Saint-Gaudens Award from Cooper Union, and the Raymond P.R. Neilson Prize from the National Academy of Design. His work has been featured in exhibitions around the country and he’s had solo museum exhibitions at the Boulder Museum of Contemporary Art, The Huntington Museum of Art in WV, and the Wichita Art Museum. His work is in public collections that include the Arkansas Art Center, the Bayly Art Museum in Charlottesville, VA, The Corcoran Gallery of art, Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, and Smithsonian American Art Museum in Washington, D.C., the Huntington Museum of Art in WV, the National Academy of Design in New York, the Oklahoma City Art Museum, and the Wichita Art Museum.
Alberto Gálvez was born and resides on the Mediterranean coast in Valencia, Spain, where he is also a tenured Professor of Painting at the renowned School of Fine Arts in Valencia, Universitat Politècnica de València. His inspiration is derived from identifiable archetypal imagery found in classical paintings, and he is an esteemed leader in his generation of artists who have returned to the tradition of figure painting. Gálvez paints his subjects from imagination, their features becoming a blend of classical and contemporary beauty. His arrestingly monumental muses often look directly at and through the viewer, their gaze at once powerful and serene.
Gálvez’s paintings can be found in numerous international private and corporate collections. Gálvez has participated in over 67 solo and group exhibitions across Europe including an invitation to participate in The Madonna in Contemporary Art, a tribute for the 25th anniversary of Pope John Paul II's pontificate, held at the Pantheon in Rome and the European Parliament in Brussels.
Amy Hill is a New York-based artist and illustrator who received a BFA from Carnegie Mellon University and also studied at New York University. Through portraiture, she selects poses, gestures, and fashion that make social, psychological, and anthropological statements. Hill’s works are inspired by previous eras that she carefully selects based on her stylistic kinship with artists of those times. She often juxtaposes modern day fashion with classic poses and compositions. Throughout her career, she’s developed a style that’s been cultivated through her intense investigations of art history, and allows her work to relate to common circumstances within relationships of time.
Hill has received grants from the Peter S. Reed Foundation and Art Matters, a studio grant from the Elizabeth Foundation, and nominations for the Catherine Doctorow Prize for Contemporary Painting and for membership in the American Academy of Arts and Letters. She received the Purchase Award from West Publishing Company, the Juror Award from the NYU Small Works Show and an honorable mention from the National Arts Club. Hill has exhibited both nationally and Internationally. Her work has been extensively reviewed in such publications as Harper’s Magazine, Artnet Magazine and the New York Times.
Shinji Himeno was born in Tokushima, Japan in 1966 and has been living and working in Berlin since 1997. Well-known for his finely focused craftsmanship, Himeno incorporates historical influences and contemporary dilemmas into his monumental oil paintings with an egg tempera underdrawing. His works explore religion and mythology, without concrete motives that fall along the lines of magical realism. Himeno brings in contemporary feelings and motivations with classical painting methods, drawing on techniques from the masters of the Renaissance, like Michelangelo, Pontormo and Bronzino.
For more than two decades, Himeno has been exhibiting his work throughout Europe. Early in his career, Himeno had an opportunity to share his work with Werner Tübke, a master in classical painting, who encouraged him to continue his studies in Europe. His works can be found in The Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna, Austria as well as in the Städel Museum in Frankfurt, Germany. Himeno studied at the Academy of Visual Arts in Leipzig, Germany and then at the Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna, Austria under the renowned Arik Brauer.
Juan Kelly, known as one of the few top living Costa Rican artists of today. Kelly creates paintings that challenge our perception of reality and present a world filled with metaphor and visual creativity. Utilizing elements and formal techniques of old master paintings, Kelly constructs an enigmatic environment that confronts the viewer’s penchant for the familiar. Kelly’s subject matter mines the fertile territory of the collective unconscious and his themes unfurl in layers of subtlety and double-entendres. His vast compositions are powerful in their impact while at the same time delicate in the weave of their nuance.
Throughout his work, Kelly explores the timeless circularity of human nature and allows the viewer to contemplate their desires in the grand scheme of existence. With a career and a loyal following that extends over three decades, Kelly has exhibited extensively in galleries and museums throughout Europe, the United States, and Latin America. His work can be found in over 300 collections around the world.