Hunt Slonem Art

Hunt Slonem 'Tulip 7' 2024. Oil on wood, 10 x 8 in. / Frame: 14.5 x 12.5 in. Signed on back. This painting features a single tulip painted in red with a green stem and leaves over a ...

Inspired by nature and his 60 pet birds, Hunt Slonem is renowned for his distinct neo-expressionist style. He is best known for his series of bunnies, butterflies and tropical birds, as well as his large-scale sculptures and restorations of forgotten historic homes. Slonem’s works can be found in the permanent collections of 250 museums around the world, including the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City, the Whitney, the Miro Foundation and the New Orleans Museum of Art. Since his first solo show at the Fischbach Gallery in 1977, Slonem’s work has been showcased internationally hundreds of times, most recently at the Moscow Museum of Modern Art and the State Russian Museum in St. Petersburg. In 2017 and 2018, he was featured by the National Museum of the Republic of Kazakhstan, the National Gallery in Bulgaria, and in countless galleries across the United States and around the world. His flair and admiration for far-flung destinations has been a staple of his life since childhood. Slonem was born in 1951 in Kittery, Maine, and his father’s position as a Navy officer meant the family moved often during Hunt’s formative years, including extended stays in Hawaii, California and Connecticut. He would continue to seek out travel opportunities throughout his young-adult years, studying abroad in Nicaragua and Mexico; these eye-opening experiences imbued him with an appreciation for tropical landscapes that would influence his unique style. After graduating with a degree in painting and art history from Tulane University in New Orleans, Slonem spent several years in the early 1970s living in Manhattan. It wasn’t until Janet Fish offered him her studio for the summer of 1975 that Slonem was able to fully immerse himself in his work. His pieces began getting exhibited around New York, propelling his reputation and thrusting him into the city’s explosive contemporary arts scene. He received several prestigious grants, including from Montreal’s Elizabeth Greenshields Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts, and the Cultural Counsel Foundation’s Artist Project, for which he painted an 80-foot mural of the World Trade Center in the late 1970s. He also received an introduction to the Marlborough Gallery, which would represent him for 18 years. Hunt Slonem tends to embrace the ephemeral beauty of nature, a characteristic that brings a nurturing, spiritual effect to his creations. Throughout his extensive career as a New York artist, Slonem has favored the subject of exotic birds, rabbits, and butterflies. Lately, his compositions have consisted of flat spaces with simple forms pushed to the front of the picture plane. The artist creates exotic forms with expressive and highly textural brushstrokes that are full of intense color, loosely inspired by artists of the German Expressionism movement such as Ernst Ludwig and Emil Nolde. Henry Geldzahler, a scholar of Hunt Slonem, notes that of contemporary artists, “he particularly admires the work of Malcolm Morely...

Inspired by nature and his 60 pet birds, Hunt Slonem is renowned for his distinct neo-expressionist style. He is best known for his series of bunnies, butterflies and tropical birds,...

Hunt Slonem Landric (9/55), 2023 Powder Coated Aluminum 14 x 12 x 3.50 in

'Finches' by Hunt Slonem, 2022. Oil on canvas, 48 x 48 in. This painting features Slonem's signature finches in white, red, blue, and green on a white background. Considered one of the great colorists of his time, Slonem’s neo-expressionist paintings feature an exuberant and bold, fauvist palette to emphasize his beloved menagerie of animals. Through the application of lavish, lush colors, Slonem’s painterly style continues to be fresh and innovative bordering on Pop Art aesthetics. Depicting his signature motifs of repeating whimsical animal imagery, the artist’s devotion to nature and its inhabitants are apparent. Born in Kittery, Maine in 1951, Hunt Slonem graduated with a Bachelor of Arts degree in Painting and Art History from Tulane University in New Orleans, Louisiana. Slonem later attended the prestigious Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture in Maine, where he was exposed to influential artists from the New York area including Alex Katz, Alice Neel, Richard Estes, Jack Levine, Louise Nevelson and Al Held. This exposure played a pivotal role in Slonem’s artistic career, as it aided in his decision to move to New York in 1973. Since 1977, Slonem has had over 250 solo exhibitions at prestigious galleries. Museums, both domestic and international, have collected his work, among them Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City, the Whitney, the Miro Foundation, and the New Orleans Museum of Art. His work has been exhibited globally, including in Madras, Quito, Venice, Gustavia, San Juan, Guatemala City, Paris, Amsterdam, Madrid, Stockholm, Oslo, Cologne, Tokyo, and Hong Kong. His work has been shown in thirty-one different museums including the Hunter Museum of American Art in Chattanooga, Tennessee, in 1981; the Museo Diocesano d'arte sacra Sant'Apollonia in Venice, Italy, in 1986; the Albany Museum of Art in Albany, Georgia, in 2007; the Istanbul Museum of Modern Art in Istanbul, Turkey, in 2007; Museo de Arte de El Salvador in San Salvador...

Hunt Slonem Knowles, 2021 Handblown Glass, Velvet, Ornate Wood Frame 27 x 17 x 9 in

oil on canvas