Artist

Paul Thek

born New York City 1933-died New York City 1988
Media - portrait_image_113845.jpg - 90452
Photography by Peter Hujar, courtesy Matthew Marks Gallery, Peter Hujar Archive, LLC.
Born
New York, New York, United States
Died
New York, New York, United States
Biography

Paul Thek appreciated the beauty in all things, even those that might appear repulsive to others. In the early 1950s he studied at the Art Students League and the Pratt Institute in New York. He mostly did paintings and drawings until the mid-1960s, when he began making wax sculptures that looked like raw meat or human limbs. He drew inspiration from ancient crypts he saw in Sicily, where “bodies [were] used to decorate a room, like flowers.” Thek eventually abandoned his grotesque imagery and resumed drawing and painting. He also constructed room-size installations of sand, newspaper, and trees. The subject of Thek’s earlier “meat” sculptures and his preference for unstable materials later in his career reveal his lifelong concern with the passing of time and the vulnerability of human flesh.

Works by this artist (14 items)

Nellie Mae Rowe, At the Art Gallery, 1979, crayon and felt tip on paper, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Museum purchase through the Luisita L. and Franz H. Denghausen Endowment and the American Women's History Initiative Acquisitions Pool, administered by the Smithsonian American Women's History Initiative, 2021.29.10
At the Art Gallery
Date1979
crayon and felt tip on paper
Not on view
Nellie Mae Rowe, Untitled (Four-Leaf Clover and Little Zebra), 1980, marker on silver gelatin print, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Museum purchase through the Luisita L. and Franz H. Denghausen Endowment and the American Women's History Initiative Acquisitions Pool, administered by the Smithsonian American Women's History Initiative, 2021.29.6
Untitled (Four-Leaf Clover and Little Zebra)
Date1980
marker on silver gelatin print
Not on view
Nellie Mae Rowe, Church Lady in Pants Suit, 1980, crayon and pencil on paper, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Museum purchase through the Luisita L. and Franz H. Denghausen Endowment and the American Women's History Initiative Acquisitions Pool, administered by the Smithsonian American Women's History Initiative, 2021.29.9
Church Lady in Pants Suit
Date1980
crayon and pencil on paper
Not on view
Nellie Mae Rowe, Untitled (Landscape with Black Girl), ca. 1980, crayon on paper, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Gift of Chuck and Jan Rosenak and museum purchase through the Luisita L. and Franz H. Denghausen Endowment, 1997.124.131
Untitled (Landscape with Black Girl)
Dateca. 1980
crayon on paper
Not on view

Exhibitions

Martha Rosler, Red Strip Kitchen
Artists Respond: American Art and the Vietnam War, 1965 – 1975
March 15, 2019August 18, 2019
Artists Respond: American Art and the Vietnam War, 1965-1975 makes vivid an era in which artists endeavored to respond to the turbulent times and openly questioned issues central to American civic life.

Related Posts

An image of a leg with a covering over it.
Taking a closer look at Paul Thek's work that investigates the physical body and the body politic.
Paisid Aramphongphan