CategoriesStyles and Movements
Figurative Painting
Painting that represents recognisable figures, objects and places, from Renaissance panels to the portraits and scenes of painters today.
No works indexed yet · 10 related artists
No open-access works for Figurative Painting are in the index yet. They will appear here as more collections are indexed.
About
Figurative painting depicts the visible world, though it never simply copies it. Renaissance painters gave it a rational framework: Masaccio modelled figures with one consistent light, and in Venice Giorgione softened outlines so that people seem to breathe within landscape. Others bent appearance for effect. El Greco stretched saints into flickering, flame-like forms, and Pieter Bruegel the Elder filled panels with sturdy villagers seen from a high viewpoint.
Photography and abstraction later forced painters to ask what figuration could still do. Some answered with close observation, as Lucian Freud did over long sittings; others, like Francis Bacon, smeared and twisted the body to register sensation. Since the 1980s figuration has been one of painting's main arenas. Kerry James Marshall paints figures in deep black within large, history-scale compositions, Lynette Yiadom-Boakye paints portraits of people who never existed, and John Currin pairs Old Master technique with awkward, satirical figures.
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Iconic Works of Art History
