Over the course of his decades-long career, Lari Pittman, living and working in Los Angeles, has developed a unique visual aesthetic that has established him as one of the most significant painters of his generation.

Pittman’s signature, densely-layered painting style includes a lexicon of signs and symbols (such as bells, eggs, animals, and ropes), a compilation of varied painting techniques, and a clear homage to the handmade, craft, and the decorative.

He creates complex compositions that mediate the tension between color, text, and imagery; landscape and decoration; and chaos and order with remarkable dexterity and often on a large scale, and the artist has an innate ability to create compositions in which each element within a painting is given equal space and significance.

Over the past two decades, Pittman has shifted focus towards a more philosophical stance, often depicting his own memories, thought processes, and domestic objects in paintings that cross the traditions of vanitas, history paintings, and magical realism. These paintings function as rich dreamscapes, juxtaposing motifs from art history with the cosmology of signifiers and objects that fill his earlier oeuvre.

His painted surfaces have become smoother, accentuating the synthetic quality of the works and showcasing the artist’s mastery of the medium. Considering his own artistic lineage, Pittman has expressed relating to a historical trajectory of female painters, from Florine Stettheimer, through Surrealists such as Remedios Varo and Leonora Carrington, to contemporary artists like Amy Sillman, Jutta Koether, and Charlene von Heyl.

In the mid-1970s, Pittman attended California Institute of the Arts in Valencia, California, completing a B.F.A. and an M.F.A. The Institute’s strong feminist arts program challenged the devaluation of art forms traditionally associated with women, and it was partially as a result of his engagement with this program that Pittman developed an interest in undermining aesthetic hierarchies and embracing the decorative arts.

Pittman’s strong affinity for the decorative can be seen throughout his numerous bodies of work, and it has contributed to his singular visual style. While Pittman’s early works were informed by the socio-political struggle resulting from the peak of the AIDS epidemic, racial discord, and LGBTQ+ civil rights struggles that defined the last two decades of the 20th century, his later paintings evince a shift in focus towards interior spaces, including domestic and psychological subjects.

The artist received his B.F.A. from California Institute of the Arts, Valencia, CA in 1974 and his M.F.A. from California Institute of the Arts, Valencia, CA in 1976. Solo exhibitions of his work have been organized at Museo Jumex, Mexico City, Mexico (2022); Hammer Museum, Los Angeles, CA (2019); The Huntington Library, Art Collections, and Botanical Gardens, San Marino, CA (2016); Le Consortium, Dijon, France (2013); Museum of Contemporary Art St. Louis, St. Louis, MO (2013); Villa Arson, Nice, France (2005); Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA), Los Angeles, CA (1996) and many more.

Lari Pittman is represeted by Lévy Gorvy Dayan Gallery and Lehmann Maupin Gallery
https://www.lehmannmaupin.com
https://levygorvy.com/

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