Andree Bars

Andrée Bars is a French painter. Having been strictly trained for four years by the American hyper-realist painter Ted Seth Jacobs, who himself inherited 19th-century master’s skills from his professor, Bars learned the profession of painting in its purest tradition. She still applies these ancient master’s techniques on her art. Each painting contains at least three layers of oil paint. Bars apply her skills of hyper-realism on surrealist ideas. Although her paintings copy the reality to the extreme, they can not be qualified in a simple term of hyperrealism nor of Trompe-l'œil style, her artworks distinguish themselves for a kind of mysterious sweetness they convey to the spectator.

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.