Richard Estes is an American artist, best known for his photorealist paintings.
Education
At an early age, Estes moved to Chicago with his family, where he studied fine arts at The School of the Art Institute of Chicago (1952-1956). He frequently studied the works of realist painters such as Edgar Degas, Edward Hopper, and Thomas Eakins, who are strongly represented in the Art Institute"s collection. After he completed his course of studies, Estes moved to New York City and, for the next ten years, worked as a graphic artist for various magazine publishers and advertising agencies in New York and Spain.
Career
Foreign the wildebeest expert, see Richard Despard Estes. The paintings generally consist of reflective, clean, and inanimate city and geometric landscapes. He is regarded as one of the founders of the international photo-realist movement of the late 1960s, with such painters as John Baeder, Ralph Goings, Chuck Close, and Duane Hanson.
Author Graham Thompson wrote, "One demonstration of the way photography became assimilated into the art world is the success of photorealist painting in the late 1960s and early 1970s.
lieutenant is also called super-realism or hyper-realism and painters like Richard Estes, Denis Peterson, Audrey Flack, and Chuck Close often worked from photographic stills to create paintings that appeared to be photographs."
During this period, he painted in his spare time. He had lived in Spain since 1962 and, by 1966, was financially able to "quit his day job".
Estes" paintings were based on several photographs of the subject. He avoided using famous New York landmarks.
He had his one-man show in 1968, at the Allan Stone Gallery.
In 1971, Estes was granted a National Council for the Arts fellowship. The same year, he was elected into the National Academy of Design as an Associate member, and he became a full Academician in 1984.