Contemporary Realism

The contemporary realism movement is a North American style of painting which came into existence c. 1960s and early 1970s. Artists such as Philip Pearlstein, Dina Brodsky, Ellen Eagle, Ken Danby,Sarah Webb (painter) and Neil Welliver are in the movement. The movement is generally depicted in figurative art works created in a natural yet highly objective style, without many interpretations of former movements. Some Contemporary Realists made a point to reject abstract art, depicting natural subject matter in a straight forward manner however some embraced the use of Abstraction as well such as Christian Cardell Corbet. 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". Many Contemporary Realists actually began as trained abstract painters, having come through an educational system dominated by an professors and theorists dismissive of representational painting. It is different from Photorealism, somewhat exaggerated and conceptual in its nature. Many of the practicing abstract artists revived the older Greek movement of Classical Realism. By applying an up-to-date twist on this classic Greek movement, artist like Peter Hurd (1908–1984) and Andrew Wyeth (1917-2009) helped to establish what has become known as Contemporary Realism.