gustave blache III
“His view of work is not a critique of the gradual disappearance of the worker but an assertion of the workers’ indelible presence. From cooking to mop-making to art conservation, the skill and humanity of the worker is what Blache brings into focus.”
— Dr. Dorothy Moss, PhD, Curator
National Portrait Gallery, Washington, DC
Gustave Blache’s (1977‒ ) passion for art developed at a very young age as he began painting copies of works by the Old Masters; his understanding of their artistry continues to influence his work today. After receiving his MFA from the School of Visual Arts in 2000, he achieved early success in group shows with such notable artists as Degas, Cassatt, Warhol, and Basqiuat. When Blache was 22, New York’s Island Weiss Gallery, known for its collection of nineteenth-century works, hosted his first solo exhibition. In 2002, the Woodward Gallery’s Paper Invitational 5 exhibition displayed Blache’s work alongside paintings by notable postwar artists such as Willem de Kooning and Andy Warhol.
Conjuring his subjects from unusual angles and rendering them with exquisite brushwork and muted colors, Blache’s works are reminiscent of Thomas Hart Benton, Robert Henri, and the Ashcan School. His paintings reveal a nineteenth-century sentiment in portraits of twenty-first-century subjects pursuing age-old professions.