Jerome Witkin

Jerome Witkin (born September 13, 1939) is an American figurative artiste whose paintings harmony with political, social and cultural themes, along in the same way as serious portraiture that melds the sitter's social position once a speaking likeness that reveals inner character. Witkin has been succinctly characterized as "a virtuoso figurative painter whose achievement mixes elements of the outmoded masters, social realism and Abstract Expressionism ..."

Witkin was born in Brooklyn, New York, the twin brother of photographer Joel Peter Witkin. Recognized as a prodigious talent, at fourteen he entered The High School of Music & Art in New York, and as soon as studied at the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture, Cooper Union, the Berlin Academy, and the University of Pennsylvania. A Pulitzer Traveling Fellowship enabled him to travel, study and further build in Europe. After his reward to the United States, Witkin received a Guggenheim Fellowship, began exhibiting at galleries in New York and joined the capability of the Maryland Institute College of Art. He higher taught at the Manchester College of Art in England, Moore College of Art, and in 1971 became a professor of art at Syracuse University.

Witkin's undertaking can be thought of as an interrelationship of three bold explorations:

While his paintings hint the measure of the old masters, social realism, and Abstract expressionism, Witkin, in a self-deprecating manner, refers to himself as a "cornball humanist". In a fuller story of his motivation, Witkin has emphasized, "If this society continues to the neighboring two thousand years, people will be looking at the twentieth century and saying, 'What did artists realize about the strange goings-on?'"

Witkin's play-act is included in the steadfast collections of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Uffizi, the Cleveland Museum of Art, and the Hirshhorn Museum.

Witkin is the daddy of photographer Christian Witkin.