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Nicholas Sperakis
"Standing Figure, " Nicholas Sperakis, Rhino Horn Group, American Realist

About the Item

Nicholas George Sperakis (American, b. 1943) Standing Figure, n.d. Oil and paper on canvas 60 x 42 inches Signed and titled on the reverse Nicholas Sperakis, the youngest of the original Rhino Horn artists, was born in New York City. He decided to become an artist when he was nine, upon his first visit to the Metropolitan Museum of Art, during which he saw a portrait of a soldier holding his helmet by Rembrandt. Sperakis studied on scholarships at the Art Students League from 1961 to 1963, at the Pratt Graphics Art Center from 1960 to 1963, and at the National Academy of Design from 1960 to 1961. In 1963, Sperakis exhibited in the Annual Print Exhibition of Mercy Hurst College in Pennsylvania and won the First Prize Purchase Award. He also had his first one-man exhibition at the Paul Kessler Gallery in Provincetown. In 1964 he was elected into the Society of American Graphic Artists and his work was exhibited in the Brooklyn Museum Print Biennial as well as among the New Acquisitions at the Walter P. Chrysler Museum in Provincetown. In 1969, Sperakis and six other artistic colleagues (Ken Bowman, Peter Dean, Michael Fauebach, Jay Milder, Peter Passuntino, and Benny Andrews) formed Rhino Horn, an art collective that maintained figurative and politically themed art when abstraction and minimalism were trending in in galleries and museums.
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