Artist

Alan Feltus

born Washington, DC 1943
Also known as
  • Alan Evan Feltus
Born
Washington, District of Columbia, United States
Active in
  • Italy
  • Hughesville, Maryland, United States
Biography

Alan Feltus painted surrealistic compositions while a student at Cooper Union in New York. At Yale, where he completed his M.F.A. degree, he found himself at stylistic odds with his Abstract Expressionist teachers Lester Johnson and Jack Tworkov. A 1970 Prix de Rome proved the turning point in Feltus's career. Apart from having time to work as he pleased, in Rome he studied classical Greek sculpture and early Renaissance art firsthand, and began figurative paintings in which he sought the organization and structural solidity he admired in Giotto, Piero della Francesca, and Paolo Uccello. Feltus paints the female figure in what appear to be carefully posed arrangements, yet he is an intuitive artist who works without models or preconceived compositional ideas. He seeks silence in his work and avoids specific meanings, believing that paintings "which are difficult or seemingly impossible to fully comprehend" are most fascinating.

Virginia M. Mecklenburg Modern American Realism: The Sara Roby Foundation Collection (Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution Press for the National Museum of American Art, 1987)

Works by this artist (1036 items)

William H. Johnson, Young Pastry Cook, ca. 1928-1930, oil on canvas, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Gift of the Harmon Foundation, 1967.59.693
Young Pastry Cook
Dateca. 1928-1930
oil on canvas
On view
William H. Johnson, Portrait of a Man, ca. 1935-1938, oil on burlap, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Gift of the Harmon Foundation, 1967.59.814
Portrait of a Man
Dateca. 1935-1938
oil on burlap
On view
William H. Johnson, Breakdown with Flat Tire, ca. 1940-1941, oil on plywood, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Gift of the Harmon Foundation, 1967.59.587
Breakdown with Flat Tire
Dateca. 1940-1941
oil on plywood
On view
William H. Johnson, For India and China, ca. 1944-1945, oil on paperboard, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Gift of the Harmon Foundation, 1967.59.662
For India and China
Dateca. 1944-1945
oil on paperboard
On view