7 most outstanding figurative art artists

The figurative art or figurative art is that art that represents recognizable images, identifiable objects to which it is tried to provide verisimilitude or some aspect is distorted to idealize, denounce or transmit a message. Thus, one can speak of artistic realism, artistic idealism, archaism, symbolism, schematism, detail, ugliness, preciousness, Expressionism, Fauvism, Dadaism, Surrealism, Metaphysical Painting, Pop Art, Hyperrealism, Cubism, Futurism, New Realism, etc.

A series of movements that, despite the loss of vigor of realism since the end of the 19th century, developed throughout the 20th and 21st centuries. In this lesson of a teacher we offer you a brief selection of some of the figurative art artists most prominent.

Index

1. Leading artists of figurative art, 20th-21st centuries
2. Lucien Freud (1922-2011), well-known figurative artist
3. Robert de Niro Sr. (1922-1993)
4. Jenny Saville (1970-present)
5. Françoise Adnet (1924 - 2014)
6. Francis Bacon
7. Antonio López (1936-)
8. Edward Hopper (1882 –1967)

The list of artists of figurative art is long, being difficult to reduce it to just a few names, but we have chosen to collect the biography of some of the most famous artists. As we have pointed out, figurativism comprises a wide range of different styles, encompassing impressionist artists like Edgar Degas, expressionists like Egon Schiele or the new contemporary figuratives like Lucian Freud or Francis Bacon among others.

Between the contemporary Spanish figurative artists Carlos Castro Crespo, Juan Manuel Vidal, José Alfaro, Mercedes Carbonel, Rut Masso, Pedro Nolasco, Mª Ángeles Agrela, Jorge Hernández, Carlos Dovao, among others, being interesting to visit the European Museum of Modern Art of Barcelonto enjoy the work of the most prominent figurative artists of the 21st century.

Lucien Freud, grandson of the neurologist and father of psychoanalysis Sigmund Freud, is considered one of the most important artists of the twentieth century.

While the art world turned towards the conceptual and the abstract, Freud remained within figurativeism and was part of the movement New Figuration (1945-1970) and the London School. He also excelled in one of his most important categories of figurative painting, the naked. Freud's nudes are powerful and reveal the personality of the person portrayed, capturing the figures in crude and realistic environments.

His first works are Pictures of people around him, his work being characterized by the strong expressiveness of the faces, a not very marked brushstroke and a slight abstraction in the faces and clothing. Over the years, Freud's color palette moved away from realism, creating his best portraits and nudes of his career.

Among his works stand out Young Naked (1966), the portraits of his mother, that of the painter Francis Bacon, the nude of the actor and showman Leigh Bowery, as well as those of Baron Heinrich Thyssen-Bornemisza or Queen Elizabeth II of England.

Robert de Niro Sr, father of actor Robert de Niro, is a painter who knew how to combine the abstraction and the figurative, without ever falling into pure abstraction and framing his work within figurative expressionism.

De Niro, inspired by European masters like Delacroix or Matisse Y great connoisseur of art history, it remained in the figurative tradition. His artistic style tends to stylize the figures with a certain expressionist touch and a palette influenced by the Fauve movement, with bold, vivid colors and areas of color defined by sharp contours.

A vital art and full of force that distinguished her style that we can see reflected in works such as Still life of fruit and flowers on a table (1961), Moroccan Woman (1979), Three Nudes in Front of a Screen (1983) or Last painting (1993).

Jenny saville is another of the figurative art artists that is part of the group Young British Artists, a heterogeneous group of artists of different styles, standing out for her figurative style and its nudes. Jenny Saville approaches her work from a feminist perspective and with a classic touch, also recalling the style of Lucien Freud.

In Saville's work appears the natural female body without idealizations, with plastic surgery operations, deformities, liposuctions, wounds, and so on. His colors are also intense, painting on large canvases, being his style and his very recognizable work.

Among his most outstanding works are Strategy (1994), Reverse (2003) or Stare (2005) or Propped (2018).

Françoise Adnet she was a French figurative painter, belonging to the postwar figurative movement. In her work there are many paintings with urban landscapes, especially landscapes of Paris, female figures, animals and flowers.

Adnet tirelessly painted daily, defining her artistic process as an exercise in patience, observation and harmonization. Most of her works are oil paintings.

Francis Bacon (1909-1992) was, like Lucian Freud, one of the greatest exponents of the so-called “London School” and the New Figuration (1945-1970). An unmistakable artist showing a universe of isolated human beings, disfigured, lonely and suffering.

Diseased, deformed and disfigured bodies that break with all the canons of previous painting and with the abstraction proposed by the dominant abstract expressionism.

Antonio Lopez (1936-) is one of the great contemporary artists. A hyper-realistic artist meticulous and with a polished technique of exact representation of reality, coming to look like oil photographs.

But López is not an orthodox hyperrealist and in the themes that he captures, close subjects, scenes of everyday life, landscapes or still lifes, overcomes the coldness of photorealism.

Edward hopper is another of the most iconic figurative art artists, becoming his work in a chronicle of the United States of the years 30, 40 and 50 and representative of American realism.

An American artist specializing in urban portraiture, being a descriptive and thorough artist, showing psychological aspects and great expressiveness. A peculiar style in which he resorts to light and shadow play, describing intimate interiors and scenes in which he reflects self-absorbed and lonely figures.

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• Velasco, Fernando (1975) The New Spanish Figuration. Factitious Separate from Aesthetic Ideas Magazine. Madrid
• VVAA (1992). From the new figuration to free figuration. Bilbao Fine Arts Museum. Bilbao