Madrid
Richard Estes
Museo Nacional Thyssen-Bornemisza
Paseo del Prado 8
Palacio de Villahermosa
July 19, 2013–September 2, 2007
Palazzo Magnani
March 24–May 27, 2007
Curated by Alessandro Parmiggiani and Guillermo Solana
It used to seem obvious that the Photorealist work of Richard Estes (born 1932) was in tune with the major artistic currents of the 1960s: primarily Pop, but also Minimalism, which it is difficult not to think of when looking at a painting such as Telephone Booths, 1968. But our sense of Estes’s affinity with these movements was doubtless mistaken and he now appears, instead, as an antimodern painter, fairly unconcerned with the art of the past century. Bringing together some fifty paintings from 1967 to the present, this retrospective should make it possible to consider the ramifications of such a reassessment. The accompanying catalogue includes texts by curators Alessandro Parmiggiani and Guillermo Solana and John Wilmerding, author of a recent monograph on the artist.