John Currin, 1962 | Figurative painter

John Currin is an American painter based in New York City.

He is most recognised for his technically proficient satirical figurative paintings that explore controversial societal topics.

His work shows a wide range of influences, including sources as diverse as the Renaissance, popular culture magazines, and contemporary fashion models.

He often distorts or exaggerates the erotic forms of the female body, and has stressed that his characters are reflections of himself rather than inspired by real people.

At White Columns in New York City in 1989 he exhibited a series of portraits of young girls derived from the photographs in a high school yearbook, and initiated his efforts to distill art from traditionally clichéd subjects.

In the 1990s, when political themed art works were favored, Currin brazenly used bold depictions of busty young women, mustachioed men and asexual divorcés, setting him apart from the rest.

He used magazines like Cosmopolitan along with old issues of Playboy for inspiration for his paintings.

In 1992 Currin moved to the Andrea Rosen Gallery, focusing, less sympathetically, on well-to-do middle-aged women.

Nonetheless, by the late 1990s Currin's ability to paint subjects of kitsch with technical facility met with critical and financial success, and by 2003 his paintings were selling "for prices in the high six figures" after he moved to the Gagosian Gallery in Chelsea, New York.

More recently, he has undertaken a series of figure paintings dealing with unabashedly pornographic themes, saying "One motive of mine is to see if I could make this clearly debased and unbeautiful thing become beautiful in a painting".

He has had retrospective exhibitions at the Whitney Museum of American Art and the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago and is represented in the permanent collections of the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden and the Tate Gallery.

Currin's Whitney retrospective of 2004 showcased the development of his career through over 40 of his displayed paintings.

In 1994 Currin met artist Rachel Feinstein at a gallery in which she was living in a self-made gingerbread house as a performance piece.

However, Feinstein specializes in sculptural work.

They were engaged two weeks later at Currin's show in Paris, and married three years later on Valentine's Day.

They have two sons and a daughter.

She has been described as his muse, which he says is "kinda corny".

However, he has stated "[W]hen I met Rachel I felt that I could connect with some principles that moved my art along, that I had some freedom from the petty things in my own personality".

Feinstein has appeared in many of Currin's paintings, both as a recognizable face and as a body model.

In 2002 Feinstein and Currin published a 24-page book of their works at the Hydra Workshop in Hydra, Greece which they titled The Honeymooners, John Currin and Rachel Feinstein.

It includes an interview conducted by Sadie Coles.

In 2011 the New York Times described them as "the ruling power couple in today’s art world.

In a 2011 interview, Currin described his relationship to his work as, "...a completely ambisexual atmosphere. I think you're right if there's a reverse logic to my work It's that the pictures of men are about men and the pictures of women are about me".

He has scrutinised and emulated 16th century Northern European paintings.

His inspirations come from Old Master portraits and pin-ups, nymphs, and ethereal feminine prototypes, as well as his muse and wife, Feinstein.

His paintings hold conversation between the grotesque and the beautiful, and range inspiration from classical artists such as Fragonard and Bouchard to Rockwell and Crumb. | Source: © Wikipedia

American painter John Currin completed a BFA at the Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh (1984) and an MFA at Yale University (1986).

In his paintings of single or coupled figures Currin confronts his own desires and subjectivity, however unsophisticated, as well as a certain view of painting as a medium that in the late 20th century has become inherently kitsch.

The wilfully degraded references to traditions from high culture are magnified by his custom of working to the small dimensions of conventional easel paintings.

His subjects take the form of bland, caricatured portraits that picture a strange, his women idealised in a manner that combines classical gravity and grace with crude pin-up voluptuousness, his males emasculated, their most striking quality a foppish femininity reflected from their female companions.

Although flaunting bad taste, his works are given depth by his broadly handled painterly technique, often recalling that of French painters such as Edouard Manet and Camille Corot: the typically large-breasted Big Lady (1993; Rivendell Col., on permanent loan to Annandale-on-Hudson, NY, Bard Col., Cent. Cur. Stud.), recalls the tonal palette and handling of the latter.

Other works make similarly uncomplicated references; Portrait (1993; Paris, R. Vifian Priv. Col.) evokes El Greco, whilst the overtly saccharine Entertaining with Mr. Acker Bilk (1995; Seattle, Donald Young Gal.) suggests the Rococo gaiety of François Boucher and Jean-Honoré Fragonard.

He describes his subtle stylistic plundering as mannerist, rather than ironic, distancing his works from the socio-political involvement of many of his contemporaries. | Source: © Tate Gallery

John Currin, pittore Statunitense, nato a Boulder, Colorado nel 1962, ma cresciuto in Connecticut, si laurea alla scuola d’arte della Yale University nel 1986.

Attualmente vive ed opera a New York ed è considerato uno dei maggiori artisti contemporanei.

Abilissimo artista, la cui tecnica pittorica richiama quella “classica”, basa le proprie opere su una vasta gamma di influenze culturali: ispirandosi principalmente ai maestri del Rinascimento europeo e del primo manierismo, rivisti con l’occhio della cultura pop americana.

E’ uno dei pittori viventi più quotati -nel 2002, Sotheby’s ha battuto una sua opera del 1989 a 427.000 dollari.

Nel maggio del 2013, il dipinto ad olio di John Currin, Bea Arthur Naked (eseguito nel 1991 e ritraente l'attrice televisiva americana Bea Arthur), è stato venduto all'asta da Christie's per 1.915.750 dollari.

A Currin sono state dedicate mostre retrospettive al Whitney Museum of American Art e al Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago ed è rappresentato nelle collezioni permanenti del Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden e del Tate Gallery.