Background
Thek was born in Brooklyn, New York, United States, on November 2, 1933.
1956
New York, United States
Paul Thek and Peter Harvey.
1957
Rhode Island, United States
Paul Fisher and Paul Thek with garland crowns, Green Hill.
1966
Oakleyville, New York, United States
Paul Thek in Oakleyville.
1968
Portrait of Paul Thek.
1976
Paul Thek in Black T-shirt.
215 W 57th St, New York, New York 10019, United States
Art Students League of New York.
200 Willoughby Ave, Brooklyn, New York 11205, United States
Pratt Institute.
30 Cooper Sq, New York, New York 10003, United States
Cooper Union.
United States
Paul Thek and Joe Raffael.
Thek was born in Brooklyn, New York, United States, on November 2, 1933.
Paul Thek studied at the Art Students League, Pratt Institute, and Cooper Union School of the Arts in New York, where he started his studies in 1951. At Cooper Union he became friends with the painter Joseph Raphael, the photographer Peter Hujar and Marion Greenstone. Among his friends were also Eva Hesse, Linda Rosencrantz and the later art critic Gene Swenson. One of his teachers was the painter Morris Kantor.
At Cooper Union Thek made portraits and nude drawings and small paintings often recalling Matisse and Picasso. Thek student's work did not reflect the contemporary New York art scene. He created set designs for the student theatre and several fashion illustrations. In 1954 he left Cooper Union. It is not surely documented whether Paul Thek took his exams as he fell ill with pneumonia.
In 1954 Thek moved to Miami, Florida where he met Peter Harvey and Charles Shuts. He stayed in Florida from the end of 1954 until May 1955. During the summer he worked as a waiter on the island of Nantucket. Later Peter Harvey asked for his assistance in a theatre play in Matunuck, Rhode Island. Together they created the set design. In 1956 Paul Thek applied for a job of a set designer in New York.
By July 1955 Paul Thek renamed himself Paul, apparently due to an artistic new beginning and because he also wanted to distance himself to his father George.
In 1957 his first exhibition took place at the Mirrell Gallery in Miami with works on paper. In 1958 he and Peter Harvey moved to New York, Thek lived in an apartment in the East Village where he stayed until his departure to Europe in summer 1962. Firstly, he went to Italy and with Peter Hujar visited the Catacombs of the Capuchins in Palermo, an experience which had a strong influence on his work. During this time he also met Susan Sontag who later dedicated her book "Against Interpretation" (1966) to him. Thek did not paint a lot, the time between 1958 and 1962 was a time of low art production. He worked as a designer in Jack Prince’s studio from 1959 till 1962. In 1962, he painted "The Birth of Venus", showing an abstract motif suggestive of human flesh. "The Birth of Venus" is considered a solo work within Thek’s oeuvre. A friend advised Thek to go to Norway to get some inspiration.
In 1964, Paul Thek took part in Andy Warhol's Screen Tests. It was during this time that he began to work in installation and sculpture, most notably creating wax sculptures made in the likeness of meat. Between 1964 and 1967, he had three solo exhibitions of his famed Technological Reliquaries at Stable Gallery and Pace Gallery in New York.
In 1967 he was awarded a Fulbright fellowship and returned to Italy, leaving New York shortly after his exhibition for The Tomb had opened. The figure in Thek's Tomb was popularly associated with the American hippie movement and has often been mistitled as Death of a Hippie. Paul Thek traveled and lived in different parts of Europe during the late 1960s and early 1970s and worked on large scale installations. In 1976 Thek took up permanent residence in New York and began teaching at Cooper Union. Amid increasing emotional stress, he struggled to make and sell work, but began to show nationally and internationally again during the 1980s.
Untitled (Globe)
Untitled (Composition notebook)
Untitled (Dinosaur)
Untitled #73 (from the series Technological Reliquaries)
Big Bang Painting
Untitled (Diver)
Untitled (z-ing)
Untitled (Composition notebook)
Grasshopper
Philosophy of Convenience
Untitled (Meat Cables)
Untitled (cityscape)
Hurrah Vacuii!!
Untitled (Penmate Composition notebook)
Untitled
Untitled (Lips with Turquoise)
Untitled (Blue Zig-Zags)
Untitled (cityscape with twin towers)
Mating
Untitled (Landscape)
Untitled (Rising Heart 3rd Version)
Untitled (6 studies)
Portrait of Topazia
Cityscape: Watering the Plants
Untitled (Eggplant)
Untitled (oval sunset)
Untitled (Blue Seascape)
Untitled (4 Ponza Landscapes)
Untitled (5/9/70)
Untitled (self-portrait, tomato, island)
Untitled (Hammer and Sickle)
Chicken Coop and Distant Island
Our Mother
Quotations:
"I sometimes think that there is nothing but time, that what you see and what you feel is what time looks like at that moment."
"Inside the glittery, swanky cases-the 'modern art' materials that were all the rage at the time, Formica and glass and plastic-was something very unpleasant, very frightening, and looking absolutely real."
Paul Thek was a homosexual.