David Hollowell Oil on Panel, Monumental Size, Gallery With Fourteen Figures

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DAVID HOLLOWELL (American b. 1951)
Gallery Interior with Fourteen Figures
Oil on panel
51 1/2 inches x 94 inches (image)
… Read more DAVID HOLLOWELL (American b. 1951)
Gallery Interior with Fourteen Figures
Oil on panel
51 1/2 inches x 94 inches (image)
64 1/2 inches x 106 1/2" overall dimensions (framed)
Custom framed
Provenance: Estate of a noted Bay Area arts philanthropist (name available upon request); the collector and his wife are recognized as benefactors of the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art’s Rooftop Sculpture Garden.

A rare opportunity to purchase this monumental work by Hollowell.

Wayne Thiebaud writes about Hollowell's work: (ARTnews, November 1991)

"David Hollowell’s work is pretty spectacular. The thing I admire in his work is its ambition, the interesting problems he sets for himself. He takes on really complex painterly issues, such as the attempt to distinguish between size and scale within them. And the fact that he works with the figure is a kind of heroic challenge."

David Hollowell received his BFA from Ithaca College in 1973, and his MFA from Yale University in 1976. His work has been exhibited across the country from New York to New Mexico, Alaska, California, Wisconsin, Colorado, and Washington DC. He taught in the studio art department at UC Davis from 1984 to 2013, and was an instructor of drawing and painting at Gustavus Adolphus College, Fontbonne College, and Washington University, St. Louis. David Hollowell is known for monumental pointillist paintings joining modern figures and techniques with classical poses, settings, and sensibilities. Renderings of marble figures are set among crowds of people in motion, juxtaposing the expected stillness of the columns and carvings with the statuesque qualities of the live models and the overall softness Hollowell’s unique style imbues each work with. Through perspective trickery and his own presence within many of the paintings, he invites the viewer into his works and into a realm of liminality and uncertainty, blurring the line between painted space and reality, between past and present.


DAVID HOLLOWELL
(Paraphrased from an article by Gary Kamiya in ARTnews, November, 1991)

David Hollowell’s paintings stun the eye. His enormous, enigmatic compositions simultaneously seduce and repel; his impressive technique adds to the works’ hypnotic effect. They inspire both awe and irritation. Yet they are more subtle than they initially appear.

Hollowell, who teaches at the University of California at Davis, practices a kind of postmodern Pointillism. Like Seurat, the creator of that exacting technique, he spends an incredibly long time on each painting: some take six months to finish, working ten hours a day, seven days a week. The final paintings recall both Post-impressionism and photorealism—with an otherworldly aura reminiscent of Piero della Francesca, one of Hollowell’s favorite artists.

Postmodernism comes into play with Hollowell’s thematic obsessions and subject matter. All of his work is concerned with illusion and the nature of pictorial space. Some of his paintings represent museums with cutaway walls, through which we see crowds admiring famous works of art, such as La Grand Jatte. His technique gives his work an almost mysterious and science-fiction-like quality. It may be the somewhat odd figures that keep cropping up—a bearded man in jeans, a woman in leotards, Picasso holding his hat behind him.

Hollowell is an artist who is aware that his work may always remain outside the mainstream, precisely because it’s so “finished.” Yet he doesn’t seem bothered by this distinct possibility. “The one thing I always had and still have is a naive dumbness and persistence, a certain kind of obsession,” he says. “that has saved me many times.”

Three years ago Hollowell suffered. brain injury when he fell off a roof. Amazingly, although is caused aphasia, it did not hinder his ability to paint He still actively works on a monumental project converting an huge interior space into an area where his murals literally cover the walls and ceilings. You can read about his project at the link below, and watch a video of his incredible one man endeavor.

https://www.businessinsider.com/artist-paints-3d-barn-mural-and-raises-aphasia-awareness-tiktok-2023-3

With its sturdy frame and well constructed back, the entire painting weighs approximately 350 pounds. Shipping of this painting will be handled through Chairish Home Delivery. See less