Anthony Brunelli “In Retrospect”

Louis K. Meisel Gallery

[Image: Anthony Brunelli "The Return" (2018-19) Oil on polyester, 48 x 86 in.]

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The Louis K. Meisel Gallery presents Anthony Brunelli: In Retrospect—a survey of Brunelli’s 25 years as a Photorealist painter. Featuring paintings from his earliest cityscapes of his hometown of Binghamton, NY to his latest paintings of Asia, Europe and the White Mountains of New Hampshire, this exhibition shows the transitions that Brunelli’s work has taken over the trajectory of his career.

Emerging from a new generation of Photorealists, Anthony Brunelli is a champion of the movement. He has spent his career experimenting with new subject matter, compositions and techniques in order to bring a fresh perspective to Photorealism and to his favorite subject—cityscapes. Influenced by Richard Estes and Edward Hopper, Brunelli’s earliest large-scale paintings depict the forgotten mill towns of Upstate New York in the 1990s. These works not only featured new subject matter for Photorealism, but also introduced a new compositional format; the canvases themselves were narrow and extraordinarily horizontal. Brunelli introduced the first extreme panoramas in Photorealism.

As he has matured, Brunelli’s subject matter and compositions have expanded beyond his earliest years. His painting style has tightened, becoming more detailed, and his compositions have more depth and motion. In the late 1990s, Brunelli became the first Photorealist to depict scenes of Southeast Asia; in these paintings, he slowly introduced figures into the foreground of his paintings, thereby providing the audience with a figurative narrative that diverges from the stillness embodied in his early works.

His latest paintings of Europe, Asia and the regional areas of the United States have continued to build on these progressions, with Brunelli becoming ever-more technically proficient and compositionally aware. An early adopter of the digital camera, his trajectory as a painter has paralleled advancements in photography in terms of color accuracy, improved clarity, and increased detail. His latest paintings of the White Mountains, The Return and Infinity, provide vantages and a wealth of information that could never be captured en plein aire. Even after 25 years, Brunelli’s hand continues to astound.