Richard Estes

Richard Estes ( born May 14, 1932 in Kewanee, Illinois) is an American painter who emanated from photorealism.

He studied in Chicago at a classical academy. His career led him soon to New York, where he began in the 1950s to paint photos. Impressed by Andy Warhol's Pop Art, Estes developed a highly-detailed and naturalistic style of painting. Its salient feature is the trompe- l'oeil painting like that reproduces every detail.

He paints mainly his own photographs, which he initially took up advertisements, posters and advertisements. Later ( in 1967 ), even from roads and city views as well as of reflections. In the 1970s and 1980s, his interest shifted increasingly to the city. Estes mounted together a new vision of reality by true photo-realistic painting, but the scenery is composed freely. As the ever so realistic rendering is a fiction, since it is a construction of different views of the same view. However, the places and streets are still recognized and localized. There is thus a representation, de-construction and re-construction of the image content. Remarkable are the street scenes in which no persons are seen. Estes paints the bustle of the big city of New York so people freely what the images are an eerie silence. From the 1980s Estes also paints visibly panoramas.

The first solo exhibition was Richard Estes, 1968 in New York at the Allan Stone Gallery.

In 1972 was Richard Estes participant in Documenta 5 in Kassel in the Department of realism.

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