Contemporary Realism

The contemporary realism movement is a worldwide style of painting which came into existence c. 1960s and early 1970s. Featuring a straightforward approach to representation practiced by artists such as Philip Pearlstein, Alex Katz, Jack Beal and Neil Welliver. The movement refers to figurative art works created in a natural yet highly objective style. Today the term Contemporary Realism encompasses all post-1970 sculptors and painters whose discipline is representational art, where the object is to portray the "real" and not the "ideal". In Canada the realist movement found a strong following on the east coast in the Maritimes. The group of artists that became known as Maritime Realists developed at Mount Allison University which established the first degree granting Fine Arts program in the country. Alex Colville who taught in the Fine Arts program at Mount Allison is considered the leading figure in this movement, along with a number of his students including Christopher Pratt, Mary Pratt, Tom Forrestall, DP Brown and Nancy Stevens. Some Contemporary Realists, like Beal and Rackstraw Downes, began as trained abstract painters. (Abstract Expressionism had been well-established by c. 1960.) Rural artist enclaves (e.g., The Hamptons; areas of Maine) encouraged naturalistic imagery for some. Others shared approaches and methods of Photorealism.¶

The text above is adapted from the Wikipedia article “Contemporary realism”, available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 licence.¶

Contemporary Realism is art movement, according to the structured record cited below. This entry was generated automatically from that record and has not yet been reviewed by a person familiar with the tradition.¹¶

The source record links this tradition to 1 external register, which can be verified through the citation.¹¶