Richard Estes

Two Men, Two Women on Benches

Circa 1960s

Richard Estes is a photorealist painter renowned for his meticulous attention to detail and invisible brushwork. He was born in Kewanee, Illinois, on May 14, 1932. From 1952 to 1956, Estes studied fine art at the Art Institute of Chicago. He relocated to New York after graduating and worked for the next 10 years as a commercial artist for various publishers in New York and Spain. By 1966, the artist had saved up enough money to paint full time. In the 1960s, Estes and his contemporaries, including painter Chuck Close and sculptor Duane Hanson, helped photorealism emerge from modern art movements such as pop art and minimalism. His paintings are reproductions of photographs he takes of urban landscapes, most of which are realistic representations of Manhattan, with few to no people on the streets and sidewalks. He often exaggerates the detail in his imagery by using mirrored objects and reflections. During the 1970s, Estes was chosen three times to represent the United States at the Bienniales in Venice and Basel. He also received the MECA Award for Achievement as a Visual Artist from Maine College of Art. In 1971, Estes was granted a fellowship with the National Council for the Arts. His work has been included in exhibitions in numerous museums around the world including the Museum of Art and Design in New York; the Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza in Madrid, Spain; the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art in Kansas City, Missouri; the Isetan Museum of Art in Tokyo, the Museum of Art in Osaka, and the Hiroshima City Museum of Contemporary Art in Japan; the Sert Gallery, Carpenter Center for the Visual Arts, Harvard University in Cambridge and Museum of Fine Arts, Boston in Massachusetts; the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden in Washington, D.C.; and the Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago, Illinois, among others. Estes’ work can also be found in numerous public collections including those of the Albright-Knox Art Gallery in Buffalo, New York; the Art Institute of Chicago, Illinois; the Butler Institute of American Art in Youngstown, Ohio; the Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art in Bentonville, Arkansas; the Detroit Institute of Arts in Michigan; the Fine Arts Museum of San Francisco, California; the High Museum of Art in Atlanta, Georgia; the Indianapolis Museum of Art in Indiana; the J.P. Morgan Chase Art Collection, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Museum of Modern Art, the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum and the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York; the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth, Texas; the National Gallery of Art and Smithsonian American Art Museum in Washington, D.C.; the National Gallery of Australia in Canberra; the Philadelphia Museum of Art in Pennsylvania; the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art in California; the Tate Gallery in London, England; the Tehran Museum of Contemporary Art in Iran; the Brooklyn Museum of Art in New York; the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis, Minnesota; and the Yale University Art Gallery in New Haven, Connecticut.