paul georges
Throughout his working life, Paul Georges (1923–2002) explored figure painting, still life, landscape, self-portraiture, and group portraits with references to mythology, art history, and contemporary politics. He spent his career traveling between a farmhouse in Normandy, France, and downtown New York, and he was known to have shuttled his works-in-progress between both locations. A decorated World War II veteran, Georges studied, postwar, with Hans Hofmann in the United States. He also studied in Paris at the Académie de la Grande Chaumière and the Atelier Fernand Léger.
Georges’ paintings combine painterly French Modernism, Rococo exuberance, and New York street attitude. In the 1960s, he felt compelled to respond to the decade’s social and political turmoil, often in the form of large-scale history paintings. He continued to paint responses to contemporary trends and events, including a presidential assassination, the AIDS epidemic, and denunciations of religious extremism and urban homelessness and his works were often the target of critical attacks from conservative critics.
Among his many awards are the Whitney Museum of American Art’s 1966 Neysa McMein Purchase Award, and the National Academy Museum’s 1983 Andrew Carnegie Prize for the 158th Annual Exhibition, and its 1991 Gladys Emerson Cook Prize for the 166th Annual Exhibition. His work can be found in the permanent collections of the Museum of Modern Art and the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York City; the Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington, DC; and the J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles, California.
