The Painting and Teaching of Philip Pearlstein

The Painting and Teaching of Philip Pearlstein


by Jerome Viola (Author) Publisher: Watson-Guptill Publications; First Edition (December 1, 1982)
ISBN-10: 0823038629ISBN-13: 9780823038626
Hardcover - 83 Color Plates & 188 b&w illustrationsItem Weight: 2.3 pounds
9.3 x 12.2 inches, 168 pages

Philip Pearlstein (born May 24, 1924) is an American painter best known for Modernist Realism nudes. Cited by critics as the preeminent figure painter of the 1960s to 2000s, he led a revival in realist art. He is a Distinguished Professor Emeritus with paintings in the collections of over 70 public art museums.

During the 1950s Pearlstein exhibited abstract expressionist landscape paintings. Around 1958 he began to attend weekly figure drawing sessions at the studio of Mercedes Matter. In 1961 Pearlstein began to make paintings of nude couples based upon his drawings, and in 1962 he began painting directly from the model in a less painterly and more realistic style. In an article published in Arts Magazine in April, 1963, Sidney Tillim wrote that "Pearlstein has not only regained the figure for painting; he has put it behind the plane and in deep space without recourse to nostalgia (history) or fashion (new images of man) ... He paints the nude not as a symbol of beauty and pure form but as a human fact—implicitly imperfect".