Artist

Paul Caranicas

born Athens, Greece 1946
Born
Athens, Greece
Active in
  • New York, New York, United States
Biography

A graduate of Georgetown University, the Corcoran School of Art, the Ecole des Beaux-Arts, and the Art Students League, Caranicas brings formidable technical skill to haunting architectural subject matter. Though not a Photorealist, Caranicas works from photographs in painting the abandoned shells of World War II defensive bunkers along the French and U.S. coastlines and in the Channel Islands. In the rigorous linearity of the blocklike concrete shapes, Caranicas sees beautiful architectural structures that for him have political and intellectual, as well as aesthetic, implications. Caranicas sets the defense bunkers into landscapes purified to the point of surrealism, and in his most recent work, pieces together sheets of paper at geometrically irregular angles to further distort the appearance of reality.

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 (4 items)

Charles White, The Children, 1950, ink and graphite on paper, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Gift of Julie Seitzman and museum purchase through the Luisita L. and Franz H. Denghausen Endowment, 2009.13
The Children
Date1950
ink and graphite on paper
Not on view
Charles White, Love Letter, 1971, color lithograph on paper, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Gift of June Wayne, 1991.179.14, © 1971, Heritage Gallery, Los Angeles
Love Letter
Date1971
color lithograph on paper
Not on view
Charles White, Love Letter, 1971, color lithograph on paper, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Gift of June Wayne, 1991.179.15, © 1971, Heritage Gallery, Los Angeles
Love Letter
Date1971
color lithograph on paper
Not on view
Charles White, Hasty B, 1970, lithograph on paper, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Museum purchase, 1979.155.1
Hasty B
Date1970
lithograph on paper
Not on view

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