Phillip Pearlstein

A key figure in the sharp-focus realist movement, Philip Pearlstein was a leader in the early 1960s of the revival of figure painting in America. He experimented briefly with landscapes and then concentrated on the realistic depiction of the nude figure, a traditional subject that had almost vanished from the contemporary art world. His work is characterized by a non-traditional informality, unexpected postures, and unusual perspectives including the radical cropping of figures. In his later works, he introduced rather elaborate backdrops including richly patterned fabrics and decorative floor patterns.

Philip Pearlstein was born in 1924 in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. He studied at the Carnegie Institute, where he received a B.F.A. in graphic design in 1949. He graduated at the same time as his friend, Andy Warhol, who became his roommate when they both moved to New York. In 1955, Pearlstein went on to graduate with an M.A. in art history from the Institute of Fine Arts at New York University. It was in this year that he began his career as a painter with a solo show at the Tanager Gallery in New York. Though he had been exposed to the works of many of the great masters throughout his tour of duty in Europe during World War II, he conducted an in-depth study of Italian art when he traveled to Italy under a Fulbright travel grant in 1958. In the early 1960s, after having achieved critical acclaim as a member of the Abstract Expressionism movement, he consciously decided to break away and become, in the face of genuine hostility from his peers, a "realist" painter. Pearlstein's fondness for the classical painting tradition, combined with his background in Abstract Expressionism, produced a personal synthesis and style that sometimes is referred to as New Realism.

He began his career as a teacher of painting and drawing at Brooklyn College in 1963, and he subsequently received grants from the National Endowment for the Arts and the Guggenheim Memorial Foundation. He became a full professor at Brooklyn College in 1977 and has since earned such prestigious awards from the American Academy and the National Institute of Arts and Letters.

Source: AskART.com