Artificial Realism Artist George Condo

George Condo is one of the most influential American artists living today. Born in New Hampshire in 1957, Condo has occupied a prominent position in the art world for close to three decades. Ranging from painting, drawing, printmaking and sculpture, his work is informed by the inherited European tradition of art making.

Incorporating a hybridization of classical influences, such as Raphael, Goya, Velazquez, Picasso and Manet, his work demonstrates a distinctive style which he coined “Artificial Realism” in the early 80s when he emerged as painter on the New York art scene. This original painterly language has greatly influenced the generation that follows him.

Often called “an artist’s artist”, Condo has stood as an example to younger practitioners through his unabashed commitment to his personal vision despite the coming and goings of fads in the art world.

Current Exhibition at Mitterrand + Cramer Gallery

Artists Stephanie Cramer and Edward Mitterrand are pleased to announce an exhibition dedicated to George Condo running through Nov. 3, 2012. Consists of a single major work of American artist, this exhibition marks an important milestone for Mitterrand + Cramer / art advisory council whose activity is now served physically by a redesign of the space occupied for 12 years at the heart of Quartier des Bains.

"Visions of Mexico" (1995) is certainly one of the few iconic paintings George Condo, by its dimensions (198 x 305 cm), but also its composition alone summarizes thirty years of work on the border between masters revisited and characters "cartoony".

George Condo defines his painting as the result of a movement that called itself the early 80s as Artificial Realism "realistic representation of what is artificial." Jean-Michel Basquiat and Keith Haring, Condo was originally the rebirth of international painting from 1980. His work represented a strong influence for many artists of his generation as the next generation (Nigel Cook, Sean Landers, John Currin, Lisa Yuskavage and Glenn Brown).

George Condo painting is characterized by its eclecticism and stylistic heterogeneity. Steeped in European culture, Condo has developed a very personal visual language, offering a reinterpretation of the history of art through 'combinations' abstract-figurative which invite jumble Picasso, Matisse, Klee, Miró, De Kooning, Manet, Velázquez or David. Master of pastiche, he invented an art of this by quoting the great masters of the past, calling on the same canvas cubism, surrealism, classicism and characters borrowed from comics or cartoon. This particular style gives birth to stunning portraits disparate. With its writhing or grimacing characters, George Condo made a mural of grotesque humanity.

"And as I think as a painter - painting these pictures I sculpt in a strange way. Moreover, it is perhaps the reason why I'm not very interested in things like transmission veins and the blood circulating through the body or how dimensions appear beneath the skin but by the values of colors and shapes of the characters."

The quote above is from when the artist was interviewed by Ralph Rugoff in the catalog of the exhibition in New York by Luhring Augustine Gallery "George Condo: Existential Portraits, 2006, p.12.

George Condo exhibited his first works in New York in 1981 and will have its first exhibition in 1983 before becoming the leading figure in contemporary art that is definitely today.

Her work is exhibited and collected by major museums (The Museum of Modern Art, New York, The Whitney Museum of American Art, The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York, the Albright-Knox Museum in Buffalo). He is represented by Skartsedt Gallery, New York, Galerie Andrea Caratsch, Zurich, Sprüth Magers, Berlin and Simon Lee Gallery, London.

In 2011, the New Museum in New York offered a retrospective of George Condo entitled "Mental States." Watch the video of the exhibition above.

Info/ Photos Courtesy: Mitterrand + Cramer and Skarstedt Gallery