American artist Chuck Close died on August 19, 2021, at the age of 81. He is considered one of the inventors of photorealism, known since the 1970s for his large-scale photorealistic portraits. When painting, he did not start from the reality of nature and its direct stimulus on the retina, rather he oriented himself on the indirect reality of the photograph. Using a grid, Chuck Close dissected each photograph and transferred it to the canvas in this way. He used different photographs for the different parts of the picture. This method allowed him to start from a very sharp focus and concentrate on a new focal point in each individual image segment. Using this method, he was able to copy the photographs onto canvas using acrylic paints, including the airbrush, and several times their life size. He partly reduced the color and partly painted only in shades of gray.
As early as 1973, he showed his paintings for the first time at the Museum of Modern Art in New York. He participated twice in the Documenta in Germany in the seventies, and his paintings were purchased by the most important museums in the world. A burst blood vessel in his spine caused Chuck Close to become paraplegic in 1988. He was then confined to a wheelchair and developed a method of using splints to guide his left arm and continue to work with a brush. He painted portraits of Brad Pitt, Barack Obama, the Dalai Lama, top model Kate Moss and himself, among others.
