John Currin

John Currin is an American artist born in Boulder, Colorado, 1962. He now lives and works in New York.

A beloved artist of our time, John Currin is characterized by a counter-current style. As a figurative painter, he opts for traditional figures at a time when minimalism and abstraction reign. The women represented by the painter remind us of those of the Middle Ages, because of their generous curves. Currin's canvases are thus endowed with a benefactor, dreamy and timeless nostalgia, which stands out from the enslaving codes of the modern world.

Eroticism is omnipresent in the work of John Currin. His early works border on the pornographic character and leave little room for the imagination. Now, the painter suggests more than he exhibits, and favors delicacy over ostentation. The naked women he represents in the foreground contrast with the background with sexual connotations. His paintings are an ode to seduction.

John Currin is a joyful artist, who admits to abusing carnal elements to counterbalance the ubiquitous pornographic images and videos on the internet. Faced with so much crudely exposed sexuality, it is essential to reinvest the erotic world in order to magnify it. John Currin is the defender of eroticism and sexuality, contrasting violently with the banality and the lack of charm of the sexual images populating our computer screens. With this artist, the stage becomes a fantasy again, seduction becomes art again, and the sexual act becomes a pleasure again.

John Currin is married to sculptor Rachel Feinstein, the painter's undisputed muse. The couple is darling of the US art scene and was voted "Most Breathtaking Artist Couple Since Jackson Pollock and Lee Krasner" by The New York Times in 2011.

John Currin is an essential figure in contemporary art. His work is already featured at the Museum Of Modern Art (MoMA), the Whitney in New York, the Art Institute in Chicago, the MoCA in Los Angeles, the Hirshhorn Museum in Washington, the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis, the Tate Collection in London, and at the Center Pompidou in Paris.