Famous Photorealism Artwork

Photorealism artists create artwork based on photos. They create the most detailed reproductions and will resort to painting, drawing, and other graphic means. They create highly realistic replicas of familiar phenomena and people.

American artists Richard Ester is considered to be a founder of the Photorealism Movenment. He is best known for his paintings of New York street scenes composing them from multiple photos. His trademark is the inclusion of reflective surfaces like storefronts and car windows, allowing his paintings to capture even more than meets the naked eye. His paintings consists of reflective, clean, and inanimate city and geometric landscapes.

American artist Robert Cottingham is known for his paintings and prints of urban American landscapes that depict building facades, neon signs, movie marquees, railroad heralds and shop fronts. He is considered to be one of the most important photorealist painters. He uses photography in his painting practice. He is best known for his meticulous depictions of mid-20th-century signs and typefaces.

German visual artist Gerhard Richter is thought of a photorealist for his paintings that reproduce photographic effects. His approach to photorealism in unique and groundbreaking. He sought to explore the relationship between painting and photography, using his canvas to blue the lines between the two mediums. The artist would begin with a photo, and then paint it onto canvas, delibertely introducing blurring effects to create some kind of interplay between the clarity of a phto and the interpretive nature of painting.

American artist Robert Longo is a member of the Pictures Generation (a group of artists who made appropriation the norm in the 1980s). He has built his fame on photorealistic depictions of mass imagery from animals to nucler explosions to paintings by other artists. His iconic drawings include torqued figures in suits and dresses caught as if mid-fall. He works with multiple mediums, detailed charcoal drawings of news images.

American artist Ellen Altfest lives and works in New York City. She is best-known for her realistic depictions of landscapes and still life. She usually paints from life giving attention to detail and is among the best of the photorealists.

British artist Marc Quinn is best known for his sculptures of contorted, floating, or pregnant human figures. He also creates photorealistic 2D artworks, such as his series of floral close-ups or his grotesque rendering of raw meat. He is a leading contemporary artist and creates art about what it is to be a person in the living world.

American artist Cheryl Kelley is known for her photorealism particularly for her paintings of classic and muscle cars. (pictured above) she began her career as an abstract expressionist but is recognized as a photorealist. She started creating paintings of cars as oil on canvas and later began using oil on aluminum panels. She bases her paintings on photographs taken at car shows and automobile museums.

American artist Ben Weiner creates his artwork by photographing paint and luxurious ephemera at close range and using the resulting image as his subject. His paintings harness the idolatrous fetishistic desire of consumer culture, the fashion industry, and the art world.He fuses two opposing practices - photorealism and abstraction.

Italian-American artist Ester Curini lives and works in Brooklyn, N.Y. She is a self-taught artist and has exhibited in many notable galleries. Her subjects are mostly animals and looks to give them a voice through her artwork. In her paintings she reinforces the only possible way for humans and animals to thrive by finding a compassionate way to coexist.

Turkish artist Taner Ceylan is one of the country's most prominent artists. He creates hyperrealist paintings with technical mastery and precision. In his paintings he explores the themes of sexuality, identity, and cultural history. His work blends technical mastery with provocative content, often challenging societal taboos and reinterpreting historical narratives through a modern, queer lens.