Richard Huntington On Sale

Richard Huntington is an American painter, printmaker and writer. He is Critic Emeritus at The Buffalo News and has written for High Performance magazine, ARTnews, and Art New England. In 2007, Huntington won the Associated Press First Award for Criticism and earlier, among several residencies, served as visiting critic at the Kennedy Center for the Arts, Washington, D.C. from 1982–85. He was the Visual Arts Director at Artpark in Lewiston, New York. He has shown his art nationally and internationally, with recent solo exhibitions at the Castellani Art Museum, Niagara University, New York (2008–09); the Albright-Knox Collectors Gallery, Buffalo (2008) and the JR Konsthallen, Sweden (2007). In 2010, the Albright-Knox Art Gallery included his work in the international biennial “Beyond/In Western New York 2010: Alternating Currents.” Huntington holds a BFA from Syracuse University and a Master of Art and Humanities from the University at Buffalo. He divides his time between Buffalo and the town of San Miguel de Allende in central Mexico.

Figurative art, as opposed to abstract art, retains features from the observable world in its representational depictions of subject matter. Most commonly, figurative paintings reference and explore the human body, but they can also include landscapes, architecture, plants and animals — all portrayed with realism.

While the oldest figurative art dates back tens of thousands of years to cave wall paintings, figurative works made from observation became especially prominent in the early Renaissance. Artists like Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci and other Renaissance masters created naturalistic representations of their subjects.

Pablo Picasso is lauded for laying the foundation for modern figurative art in the 1920s. Although abstracted, this work held a strong connection to representing people and other subjects. Other famous figurative artists include Francis Bacon and Lucian Freud. Figurative art in the 20th century would span such diverse genres as Expressionism, Pop art and Surrealism.

Today, a number of figural artists — such as Sedrick Huckaby, Daisy Patton and Eileen Cooper — are making art that uses the human body as its subject.

Because figurative art represents subjects from the real world, natural colors are common in these paintings. A piece of figurative art can be an exciting starting point for setting a tone and creating a color palette in a room.

Browse an extensive collection of figurative paintings on 1stDibs.