RICHARD ESTES: PHAIDON FOCUS RICHARD ESTES: PHAIDON FOCUS

Icons of contemporary American realism, the works of Richard Estes have established him as one of the pre-eminent realist painters of his generation. Photorealism emerged in the late 1960s and early 1970s, deliberately flouting the prevailing abstraction that dominated the American art scene. Estes was at the forefront of this new photographically derived and inspired imagery, which appeared at a time when even the very existence of painting was being challenged by modernist art critics.