That New York Art Academy is pleased to announce an exhibition by award-winning musician, activist and accomplished artist John Mellencamp on September 29, 2022, which will run through November 15, 2022.
For more information, visit the New York Academy website HERE
“The art of John Mellencamp extends the American brand of Expressionism…Free in spirit, his work strikes us. His work is not work that plays around the edges; he is as strong-willed as the best American Expressionists, no matter which era we compare him to.” -Dr. Louis A Zona
As his musical career flourished, Mellencamp began painting seriously in 1980, with an early affinity for portraiture, influenced by the works of Otto Dix and Max Beckmann.
His affinity with German Expressionism of the early 20th century with its existential focus on the human condition forms the basis for the development of Mellencamp’s “oeuvre”.
Documenting America’s heart and soul, his large-scale oil portraits and mixed-media pieces unveil unsettling but beautiful truths with a sort of anti-establishment frown and rich narrative sense. Like his music, Mellencamp’s paintings are carefully composed through the structural demands of harmony, rhythm and order, and are thematically consistent with the small-town, serious voice of the heartland.
John Mellencamp: American Paintings and Assemblages Coffee Table Art Book of Mellencamp’s work is out October 18 through Rizzoli New York. This book documents “America’s heart and soul” with an “anti-establishment frown.” The book contains 170 original works, essays by David L. Shirley and Bob Guccione Jr. and one by Dr. Foreword by Louis A. Zona. Mellencamp’s art is storytelling at its finest.
The exhibition is curated by Dexter Wimberly, an acclaimed American curator based in Japan who has organized exhibitions around the world.
“Mellencamp is a very serious visual artist who has a lot to say about life and the times we live in,” says Wimberly. “I’m thrilled to have the opportunity to share his work with a new audience of art lovers and collectors.”
“Although we know Mellencamp primarily as a rock star, one of the best-selling artists of all time and a Hall of Famer, he is also a great painter, as this book shows. Not a musician who also paints… No, John rightfully belongs in the modern art pantheon,” says Bob Guccione Jr.
Mellencamp is a member of the Rock and Roll and Songwriters Halls of Fame, recipient of the John Steinbeck Award, the ASCAP Foundation Champion Award, the Woody Guthrie Award, the Americana Music Association’s Lifetime Achievement Award, and most recently the Founders Award, American’s highest honor Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers.
About the New York Academy of Art: The New York Academy of Art was founded in 1982 by artists, scholars and patrons of the arts, including Andy Warhol, to foster a resurgence in figurative and representational art education. The academy has since evolved into a 501(c)(3) nonprofit cultural institution that is home to the nation’s first graduate school in the figurative arts, a continuing education program, the region’s most comprehensive library of figurative art, an extensive exhibition and lecture series, and legendary New Yorkers Events like Take Home a Nude and Tribeca Ball.
About Dexter Wimberly: Dexter Wimberly is a Japan-based American curator who has organized exhibitions in galleries and institutions around the world including the Museum of Arts and Design in New York City, the American University in Washington DC, KOKI Arts in Tokyo and The Third Line in Dubai. His exhibitions have been reviewed and featured in publications such as The New York Times and Artforum, and supported by the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts and the Kinkade Family Foundation. Wimberly is Senior Critic at the New York Academy of Art and founder and director of the Hayama Artist Residency in Japan. He is also co-founder and CEO of the online education platform CreativeStudy.
