Stephen Posen (born 1939) is an American painter and photographer who works in both New York City and

Bucks County, Pennsylvania Bucks County is a county in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania. As of the 2020 census, the population was 646,538, making it the fourth-most populous county in Pennsylvania. Its county seat is Doylestown. The county is named after the Englis ...

Early life

Posen studied painting at

Washington University Washington University in St. Louis (WashU or WUSTL) is a private research university with its main campus in St. Louis County, and Clayton, Missouri. Founded in 1853, the university is named after George Washington. Washington University is r ...

, where he earned his BFA in 1962. Posen continued on to graduate studies at

Yale University Yale University is a private research university in New Haven, Connecticut. Established in 1701 as the Collegiate School, it is the third-oldest institution of higher education in the United States and among the most prestigious in the wo ...

earning his MFA in 1964. At Yale, Posen was a part of a great confluence of talents including

Brice Marden Brice Marden (born October 15, 1938) is an American artist generally described as Minimalist, although his work may be hard to categorize. He lives and works in New York City; Tivoli, New York; Hydra, Greece; and Eagles Mere, Pennsylvania. Life ...

Richard Serra Richard Serra (born November 2, 1938) is an American artist known for his large-scale sculptures made for site-specific landscape, urban, and architectural settings. Serra's sculptures are notable for their material quality and exploration o ...

Nancy Graves Nancy Graves (December 23, 1939 – October 21, 1995, in Massachusetts) was an American sculptor, painter, printmaker, and sometime-filmmaker known for her focus on natural phenomena like camels or maps of the Moon. Her works are included in man ...

and

Chuck Close Charles Thomas Close (July 5, 1940 – August 19, 2021) was an American painter, visual artist, and photographer who made massive-scale photorealist and abstract portraits of himself and others. Close also created photo portraits using a very l ...

. After graduate school, Posen spent two years in Italy on a

Fulbright Fellowship The Fulbright Program, including the Fulbright–Hays Program, is one of several United States Cultural Exchange Programs with the goal of improving intercultural relations, cultural diplomacy, and intercultural competence between the people of ...

Career

In 1966, Posen moved to New York City and became an integral part of the Soho art scene of the 1960s and 1970s, well-known for his

Photorealism Photorealism is a genre of art that encompasses painting, drawing and other graphic media, in which an artist studies a photograph and then attempts to reproduce the image as realistically as possible in another medium. Although the term can be ...

work. Posen's

works were exhibited in one-man exhibitions at Ivan Karp's OK Harris Gallery in 1969, 1971 and 1974,. at Robert Miller Gallery in 1978, and in group exhibitions including the Sidney Janis Gallery and the 1972 Documenta V exhibition in

Kassel, Germany Kassel (; in Germany, spelled Cassel until 1926) is a city on the Fulda River in northern Hesse, Germany. It is the administrative seat of the Regierungsbezirk Kassel and the district of the same name and had 201,048 inhabitants in December 2020. ...

, and the

Yale University Art Gallery The Yale University Art Gallery (YUAG) is the oldest university art museum in the Western Hemisphere. It houses a major encyclopedic collection of art in several interconnected buildings on the campus of Yale University in New Haven, Connecticut. ...

in 1974.

Salvador Dalí Salvador Domingo Felipe Jacinto Dalí i Domènech, Marquess of Dalí of Púbol (; ; ; 11 May 190423 January 1989) was a Spanish Surrealism, surrealist artist renowned for his technical skill, precise draftsmanship, and the striking and bizarr ...

and

Andy Warhol Andy Warhol (; born Andrew Warhola Jr.; August 6, 1928 – February 22, 1987) was an American visual artist, film director, and producer who was a leading figure in the visual art movement known as pop art. His works explore the relationsh ...

were a few of the many supporters of Posen's early work. In 2018, select work from the 1960s and 1970s including his "Fabric over Boxes" and "Cutouts" series were exhibited at Vito Schnabel Projects in New York City, and at the Vito Schnabel Gallery in

St. Moritz, Switzerland St. Moritz (also german: Sankt Moritz, rm, , it, San Maurizio, french: Saint-Moritz) is a high Alpine resort town in the Engadine in Switzerland, at an elevation of about above sea level. It is Upper Engadine's major town and a municipality in ...

. Beginning in the 1980s, Posen expanded into other stylistic approaches and mediums including drawing, trompe-l'oeil compositions, cartoon and pop culture iconography, mixed media, and photography. Posen had one-man exhibitions at the Jason McCoy Gallery in New York City in 1986 and 1990. In recent years Posen exhibited at the

Drawing Center The Drawing Center is a Manhattan, New York, museum and a nonprofit exhibition space that focuses on the exhibition of drawings, both historical and contemporary. History The Drawing Center was founded by former assistant curator of drawings at ...

and the

Deutsche Guggenheim The Deutsche Guggenheim was an art museum in Berlin, Germany, open from 1997 to 2013.Kuhla, Karoline"Final Exhibition: The Guggenheim's Farewell to Berlin" ''Spiegel Online'', November 15, 2012 It was located in the ground floor of the Deutsche B ...

Berlin, Germany Berlin ( , ) is the capital and largest city of Germany by both area and population. Its 3.7 million inhabitants make it the European Union's most populous city, according to population within city limits. One of Germany's sixteen constituent ...

. Posen has delved deeply into photography. "Ellipsis: Dual Vision," a book of his paired photographs, was published in 2015. Posen has developed a visual language that moves freely between personal poetry and art historical references. His practice is one of constant reinvention that cannot be categorized as either figurative or abstract. Posen's work is recognized in museum collections including the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) and the

Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, often referred to as The Guggenheim, is an art museum at 1071 Fifth Avenue on the corner of East 89th Street on the Upper East Side of Manhattan in New York City. It is the permanent home of a continuously exp ...

in New York City, and the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Art (PAFA) in

Philadelphia, Pennsylvania Philadelphia, often called Philly, is the largest city in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, the sixth-largest city in the U.S., the second-largest city in both the Northeast megalopolis and Mid-Atlantic regions after New York City. Sinc ...

, and the Nelson- Atkins Museum in

Kansas City, Missouri Kansas City (abbreviated KC or KCMO) is the largest city in Missouri by population and area. As of the 2020 census, the city had a population of 508,090 in 2020, making it the 36th most-populous city in the United States. It is the central ...

Publications

* ''Stephen Posen: New Paintings''. New York: Jason McCoy Gallery, 1990. Introduction by Lauren Sedofsky. * ''Stephen Posen: Drawings 2003–2005''. New York: Stephen Posen, 2006. Essay by

Dore Ashton Dore Ashton (May 21, 1928 – January 30, 2017) was a writer, professor and critic on modern and contemporary art. Biography Ashton was born in Newark, New Jersey on May 21, 1928. She was the author or editor of more than thirty books on art, in ...

and Raphael Rubinstein. * ''Stephen Posen: Dancer/Mirror''. New York: The Drawing Center, 2006. Essay by

. * ''Stephen Posen: Paint/Photo''. New York: Churner and Churner, 2012. Exhibition catalogue. * ''Ellipsis: Dual Vision''. New York: Glitterati, 2015. . Texts by Alexandra Posen, Colin Cheney, Scott Indrisek, Zac Posen. * ''Stephen Posen: Threads: Paintings from the 1960s and 1970s''. Vito Schnabel Gallery, 2018. Exhibition catalogue. . Essay by Alex Bacon.

References

External links

Stephen Posen's website
{{DEFAULTSORT:Posen, Stephen 1939 births Sam Fox School of Design & Visual Arts alumni Yale School of Art alumni Photorealist artists Living people