Arthur Lerner

Arthur Lerner (born 1929) is an American artist, known for his atmospheric figurative paintings and drawings, landscapes, and still lifes. He is sometimes described as a realist, but most critics observe that his act out is more unreliable than descriptive or literal. Associated in imitation of Chicago's influential "Monster Roster" artists beforehand in his career, he shared their quickness for expressive figuration, fantasy and mythology, and their existential outlook, but diverged increasingly in his classical formal concerns and more unfriendly temperament. Critics frequently note in Lerner's art a suitability of roomy that evokes Impressionism, delicate color and modelling that "flirts with dematerialization," and the draftsmanship that serves as a introduction for everything of his work. The Chicago Tribune's Alan Artner lamented Lerner's comparative want of recognition in bill to the Chicago Imagists as the fate of "an aesthete in a town dominated by tenpenny fantasts." Lerner's perform has been extensively covered in publications, featured in books such as Monster Roster: Existential Art in Postwar Chicago, and acquired by public and private collections, including those of the Smithsonian Institution, Art Institute of Chicago, Smart Museum of Art, and Mary and Leigh Block Museum of Art, among many.