Alan Feltus District Of Columbia / Italy (b. 1943) Silvanna, 2002 oil on linen Signed and dated lower right. Provenance: Forum Gallery, New York. Biography from the Archives of askART: Alan Feltus, born in Washington DC, is a figurative painter of contemporary classicism, which is rooted iconically in artwork of the Italian Renaissance but has a timeless, melancholy aspect related to Modernism. However, his fascination with the Italian Old Masters and the culture of Italy, inspired him in 1987 to buy a farm near Assisi, Italy and became a full-time resident. His figure subjects, often depicted in pairs in interior settings, usually have dark hair, simple clothing, "downturned mouths and sideways glances" with limbs that are "almost sculpturally smooth and characteristically bent into intriguing puzzlelike patterns. . . . unspecified narratives hover in the air, and the inhabitants seem lost in their own separate worlds of memory." (American Arts Quarterly, 54-55) He does not paint from models and rarely shows objects in his interior settings. He says that his paintings are a combination of realism and imagination, "intuitive by nature. . . .What I paint comes from within myself. I use mirrors to observe various parts of my own face or body to understand structure. . . . Every form in a painting is given a gesture. . . . I want to find the most perfect visual arrangement of form I can find." (Feltus 56-57) Feltus studied at the Tyler School of Art at Temple University in Philadelphia from 1961 to 1962 and at Cooper Union in New York City, where he received his BFA degree in 1966. In 1968, he earned an MFA degree from Yale University. Awards include The Prix de Rome for study at the American Academy in Rome, 1970 to 1972; a Tiffany Foundation Grant in 1980; a grant from the National Foundation for the Arts in 1981; and in 1982, a Pollock-Krasner Foundation Grant. As an art educator, he was an Instructor at the Dayton Art Institute in Ohio from 1968 to 1970; and Associate Professor of Art at American University in Washington DC from 1972 to 1984." 19 1/2"H x 15 1/2"W (sight), 22 1/2"H x 18 1/2"W (frame)