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Jack Graves III is an American artist, born in 1988 in Jacksonville, Florida. He grew up surrounded by inspiration, having an art dealer as a father — John Graves Jr., who founded The Collector's Exchange in St. Augustine, FL in 1978 (today Graves International Art).

At the age of 5, Graves’s family moved away from urban Jacksonville, Florida, to rural Somerset, Virginia. There, he grew up in the country, attending and graduating from Grymes Memorial School in 2003 winning the Art Departmental award. He then attended the Blue Ridge School for four years, an all-male boarding school founded more than 100 years ago, also winning the Art Departmental award there out of the entire student body in 2007. Upon high school graduation, Graves attended school abroad for a year, studying art at the University of Newcastle, UK, and then back to the United States to finish at Hampden-Sydney College, VA. He would be recognized for his art at both of these colleges. A large photograph portrait of Graves working in the college's art studio while an art student hangs today within the ground floor of the famous Bortz Library at Hampden-Sydney College.

After college, Graves took his talents into the art world, working in Charlottesville, VA. He mainly works in acrylic paints, but also some pen and ink works on paper. He is predominantly represented by the gallery operated by his father John Graves and brother Alex Graves, Graves International Art in St. Augustine, FL, although he regularly participates in shows and exhibitions among other galleries along the East Coast of the United States.

Graves’s work is featured on the two most exclusive online art marketplaces, 1stDibs and Artsy. Over the course of 10 years, Graves has created more than a handful of painting series: “Abstract,” “Americana,” “Aura,” “Diamond,” “Eclecticism” (Supreme), “Rorschach,” and most notably, his very popular “Icon” series. Since 2011, Graves’s work has been placed in private collections around the world from New York to Hong Kong. He has placed work in private collections in over 35 states in the United States and almost 20 different countries worldwide. Notable acquisitions include Princess Diana Icon III (2019), which was placed into the Princess Diana Museum, Los Angeles, CA, and The Venus of Alexandria Icon (Yves Klein) (2019), which was placed into a private collection within the royal family of Qatar.

Today, Graves lives and works in Jacksonville, FL.

Find original Jack Graves III paintings and other art on 1stDibs.

Used to refer to a time rather than an aesthetic, Contemporary art generally describes pieces created after 1970 or being made by living artists anywhere in the world. This immediacy means it encompasses art responding to the present moment through diverse subjects, media and themes. Contemporary painting, sculpture, photography, performance, digital art, video and more frequently includes work that is attempting to reshape current ideas about what art can be, from Felix Gonzalez-Torres’s use of candy to memorialize a lover he lost to AIDS-related complications to Jenny Holzer’s ongoing “Truisms,” a Conceptual series that sees provocative messages printed on billboards, T-shirts, benches and other public places that exist outside of formal exhibitions and the conventional “white cube” of galleries.

Contemporary art has been pushing the boundaries of creative expression for years. Its disruption of the traditional concepts of art are often aiming to engage viewers in complex questions about identity, society and culture. In the latter part of the 20th century, contemporary movements included Land art, in which artists like Robert Smithson and Michael Heizer create large-scale, site-specific sculptures, installations and other works in soil and bodies of water; Sound art, with artists such as Christian Marclay and Susan Philipsz centering art on sonic experiences; and New Media art, in which mass media and digital culture inform the work of artists such as Nam June Paik and Rafaël Rozendaal.

The first decades of the 21st century have seen the growth of Contemporary African art, the revival of figurative painting, the emergence of street art and the rise of NFTs, unique digital artworks that are powered by blockchain technology.

Major Contemporary artists practicing now include Ai Weiwei, Cecily Brown, David Hockney, Yayoi Kusama, Jeff Koons, Takashi Murakami and Kara Walker.

Find a collection of Contemporary prints, photography, paintings, sculptures and other art on 1stDibs.

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.