Robert R. Anderson Photorealist Figure Painting OK Harris NY

A signed original by Robert R. Anderson — the New Jersey photorealist exhibited by Ivan Karp's OK Harris Gallery in SoHo through the height of the American Photorealism movement. The oval pattern across her bodice is the same shape as the concentric arcs sweeping behind her. She is wearing the background. This is the painting's argument — figure and field made of the same visual material, separated only by the soft airbrushed modeling of skin and fabric against the hard-edged geometry of the ground.

She stands cropped at the lip, hand on hip, weight on one leg in a striped metallic tank and deep aubergine skirt — composed, anonymous, entirely self-possessed. The face is withheld; the authority is not. Acrylic on paper, airbrush technique. Signed "Anderson" in cobalt at lower right and again on the verso.

ARTIST BIOGRAPHY

Robert R. Anderson (American, 1946–2010) earned his MFA from Pratt Institute in 1972 and was awarded a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship along with three New Jersey State Council on the Arts Fellowship grants. His paintings exhibited through OK Harris Gallery — Ivan Karp's foundational SoHo space, which launched Robert Bechtle, Ralph Goings, Robert Cottingham, and the rest of the canonical American Photorealism roster beginning in 1969 — and entered the permanent collections of the Morris Museum (NJ), SUNY Brockport, the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, Muhlenberg College, and AT&T's corporate holdings.

Anderson worked exclusively in acrylic, building each painting from composited photographic sources: hard-edged airbrush rendering for objects, softer feathering for figures, set against flat posterized fields. From 1990 he served as Fine Art Consultant to Liquitex — the leading American acrylic paint manufacturer — and produced instructional videotapes on photorealism and color theory. He co-authored the painting manual Art of the Dot, taught college-level drawing, painting, and design, and served as a contributing editor to a national art magazine.

CONDITION

Excellent. The painted surface is clean and bright across the entire field with no losses, lifting, or abrasion to the figure or ground. Paper backing on the frame verso is loose.

DIMENSIONS / SPECIFICATIONS

• Artist: Robert R. Anderson (American, 1946–2010)
• Signature: "Anderson" in cobalt, lower right and on verso
• Medium: Acrylic on paper, airbrush technique
• Style: Photorealist figure on hard-edged abstract ground
• Gallery representation: OK Harris Gallery, New York City
• Awards: National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship; three NJ State Council on the Arts Fellowship grants
• Education: MFA, Pratt Institute (1972); BS, SUNY Brockport (1969)
• Frame: Solid oak with linen-wrapped mat, behind glass
• Overall dimensions: 35.25" H × 35" W × 2" D
• Sight dimensions: 25" H × 25" W