Anthony Cudahy takes inspiration from real life, personal photographic archives, movie stills and art history, to render figurative paintings that capture characters in intimate and pensive moments. A graduate of Hunter College and Pratt Institute, the Brooklyn-based artist uses oil and acrylic paint to create scenes wherein color and light become as much a character or force as the depicted figures. His works have been the subject of solo and two-person exhibitions at New York's 1969 Gallery and Deli Gallery, and have also been included in group exhibitions at the FLAG Art Foundation, Perrotin Gallery, and James Fuentes Gallery, among others.
The artist painted Embrace during the height of the pandemic in 2020—an anxious time that he likened to being in a perpetual waiting room. Like other figures within this originating body of work, the solitary male subject appears transfixed in a purgatorial space, gazing downwards before his own reflection. Visually divided into complementary planes of mauve, blue, yellow, and green, the painting also imposes flowers that originate from a work by the French Symbolist artist Odilon Redon. In a special additional edition of fifteen, Cuhady will hand embellish the flowers with gouache and acrylic in each print.
Anthony Cudahy
Lean Mirrored (with Redon Flowers), 2021
24 x 18.5 inches
Archival pigment print
Limited Edition of 35 with 4 AP
Signed and numbered by the artist
More