Late 20th Century & Contemporary

1960–present

Painting after the 'death of painting' — Hockney's California, Basquiat's graffiti, Richter's blur, Saville's new flesh.

Acrylic paint, spray paint, industrial materials. Photography as source. Return to the figure with new urgency.

6 artists36 colors

b. 1937

British

Painter of California light, swimming pools, and the joy of looking. A Bigger Splash — acrylic sunshine.

Early adoption of acrylic paint — flat, quick-drying, perfect for California light. Clean edges, flat color, photographic composition.

1960–1988

American

From graffiti to gallery in two years. Fused street art, anatomy, African diaspora, jazz, and art history.

Oil stick, acrylic, spray paint, collage on massive canvases. Raw, urgent, deliberately unfinished.

b. 1932

German

Painter between photography and abstraction. Photo-paintings blur the image; abstract works are pure squeegeed color.

Photo-paintings: oil blurred with dry brush. Abstractions: layers of paint dragged with giant squeegee revealing colors beneath.

b. 1970

British

Painter of flesh at monumental scale — the body under pressure, surgery, gravity, transformation.

Enormous canvases (up to 10 feet). Thick impasto flesh built up with palette knife. Medical photography as reference.

b. 1969

British

Abstract-figurative painter — bodies dissolving into landscapes of paint. De Kooning's heir with old-master references.

Rapid, gestural oil painting. Figures emerge and disappear in swirls of color. References Rubens, de Kooning, Degas.

b. 1977

British-Ghanaian

Painter of imagined Black subjects — not portraits but fictions. Completed in a single day, each painting.

Works alla prima — each painting finished in one session. Muted, old-master-referencing palette applied with liquid fluency.