NEW YORK, NY.- Bernarducci Gallery announced it will represent photorealist painter John Baeder. Baeder is best known for his paintings and prints of American roadside diners. He was the subject of a monograph, John Baeder’s Road Well Taken by Jay Williams, featuring his paintings that capture this particular slice of Americana. Bernarducci Gallery will mount an exhibit of Baeder’s work in 2018.
Baeder studied Fine Arts at Auburn University in the 1950s, and was initially inspired by the work of artists like Diebenkorn, de Kooning, and Tworkov. As a student, Baeder would travel home by car between Atlanta and Alabama between semesters, and it was during this time that his fascination with diners took hold, cementing this particular vision of rural America in his mind.
After graduating Baeder became an art director, working in advertising, before eventually committing to art as a full time pursuit in the early 1970s. Over the course of his decades-long career, he has captured the iconography, whimsy, and social history of diners – both operational and defunct – which dot the American landscape. His highly detailed paintings depict the individuality and character of the diners that he encountered throughout his career. As Vincent Scully wrote of Baeder’s work, his paintings are “gentle, lyrical, and deeply in love with their subjects…He sees everything as its own size in its proper environment. His diners fit into their urban context like modest folk heroes.”
Baeder is a natural fit to Bernarducci Gallery’s program, which represents emerging and established artists who are part of the Precionist Realism movement. Bernarducci Gallery was founded by Frank Bernarducci, a longtime 57th street art dealer and champion of realist painters. The Gallery represents a selection of emerging artists as well as many of the established painters with whom Bernarducci has had long relationships. This spring Bernarducci will roll out his full program at a new, high profile ground floor space in Chelsea. There, he will he exhibit a full roster of artists, including many whom he represented as co-owner and founder of Bernarducci Meisel Gallery. Bernarducci Gallery Chelsea will continue Bernarducci’s longstanding interest in realism, specifically highly detailed precisionist realism, and in bringing both emerging and established artists’ works into the mainstream.
