Tom Blackwell “American Photorealist”

Louis K. Meisel Gallery

This event has ended.

Louis K. Meisel Gallery presents Tom Blackwell’s solo exhibition in celebration of his new monograph, Tom Blackwell: The Complete Paintings, 1970-2014. Published by the Artist Book Foundation, the book is a comprehensive volume of the artist’s work, covering his artistic development and process.

Tom Blackwell is one of the earliest painters of Photorealism, a movement noted for its ardent embrace of photographic source material. In 1969, Blackwell began a series of brashly beautiful motorcycle paintings that established him as one of the founders and foremost artists of the movement. Fascinated by refracting light and reflections, Blackwell ultimately translated his interest into a new subject—urban storefront windows. In his store-window paintings, Blackwell captures the counterpoint between the idealized reality of the store display and bustling urban life reflected in the glass. As he has stated, “[my] goal is to reveal something about the actual world and to explore our photo-mediated perceptions of it.”

Blackwell, born in Chicago in 1938, has deftly captured the vibrancy and visual excitement of urban street life for the past four decades and has had solo exhibitions throughout the United States and internationally. His paintings are in numerous collections, including The Museum of Modern Art, New York, NY; the Guggenheim Museum, New York, NY; the Smithsonian Institution, Washington, DC; and the Yale University Art Gallery, New Haven, CT.