Robert Colescott (American, b. 1925, Oakland, California, d. 2009, Tucson, Arizona)

Robert Colescott is the painter of love and sex, race and money. His works are full of many personal stories that affect his life, such as infidelity, lies, joys, suffering, happy and sad moments. Art is the road that the artist chose to channel his obsessions, his anxieties, his vital concerns.

The human eroticism is then the most characteristic feature of the work of Colescott. It is an uninhibited eroticism, sometimes burlesque, full of irony and humor. The naked body is the basic weapon of the author.

Sometimes the figures are disproportionate, with exaggerated sexual organs (oversized), perhaps to provoke a sharper satire. Also, drawing and brushwork are very loose, gestural, spontaneous, which speaks of an artist with a mastery of pictorial art. His work is in this sense within the legacies of the neo-expressionist painting, especially with regard to employment of the grotesque as an expressive element.

The use of color is also very free, experimental, sometimes with strong contrasts between hot and cold, intense and neutral.

Another interesting element is that Colescott likes to place texts on the paintings. These texts have great philosophical and literary depth, and make us meditate on the meaning of our lives, and the consequences of our actions. Consider this disturbing question that the artist throws us, when he says: "Love is what?" Beautiful interrogation that brings us to question the nature and essence of the most universal human feeling. That is the power of Colescott's art.

Collections: Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; the Fabric Workshop and Museum, Philadelphia; the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; and the Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington, DC.

For further inquiries contact the N’Namdi Contemporary Fine Art Gallery 786-332-4736 | 177 Nw 23rd St. Miami, Fl 33127 | www.nnamdicontemporary.com