Phil/Fingerprint (Primary Title)
Chuck Close, American, 1940 - 2021 (Artist)
"I was inspired by the masters and how they painted, but there was an absence of people I could recognize." —Barkley Hendricks
Although well known to aficionados of realist painting and those within the African American art world, Hendricks’swork long eluded wider recognition because his style, for most of his career, ran counter to the prevailing trends of abstraction, Pop, Minimalism, Conceptual Art, and Postminimalism.
Hendricks’s portraits feature everyday people, most often friends and family. Generally he places a single figure, built up with thin translucent layers of oil paint, against a single-color background painted with acrylics. Sisters (Susan and Toni) is a rare example of a double portrait. This painting oftwo stylish women Hendricks met in Boston belongs to a series of works with dark backgrounds, against which the bright shirts and jewelry pop.
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