Cuadro

Hunt Slonem was born in Maine in 1951. He received his BA from Tulane University in Louisiana and then studied painting at Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture in Maine. His obsessive and repetitive rendering of his subjects reflects his desire to explore issues of spatial complexity, compression and density in what acclaimed curator Henry Geldzahler deemed, “a consistent investigation of post-cubist abstraction” (1993). Slonem is not interested in realism or a demonstration of contemporary interests in politics or media and his paintings are neither narrative nor specific in detail. Rather, his work is deeply rooted in the act of painting. His jarring colour choices, spontaneous mark making and scratched hatch marks are the result of his ongoing fascination with the manipulation and implementation of paint.

Slonem is best known for his paintings of tropical birds, inspired by his personal aviary in which he keeps more than one hundred live birds of various species. Slonem’s birds are compressed within a cage, leaving the viewer to feel slightly uneasy with the unnatural confines and limited space to which his creatures are subjected. However, the cage does not simply signify man’s encroachment on nature (although this is a long-standing implication in Slonem’s work), but also the confines that nature places on any life.

Since 1977, Slonem has soloed in over 250 exhibitions at prestigious galleries. His work is exhibited globally and is held in the collections of over 70 international museums. In 1991, he won the National Endowment for the Arts Grant in painting and MacDowell Fellowship in 1986, 1984 and 1983. Slonem currently lives and works in New York City.