YOUNGSTOWN, OH.- The Butler Institute of American Art, located in Youngstown, will exhibit a new monumental work by photorealist painter Peter Maier beginning June 5 and continuing throughout the summer or 2013.

The painting is titled “Horse-Power (Ben)” —and is a 9 x 11.5 foot masterwork that has never before been seen by the public or exhibited in a museum or gallery. The portrait of the Budweiser Clydesdale, “Ben,” was painted with automotive paint (DuPont CROMAX-AT) on fabricated black aluminum panel, and was completed in 2011. The Butler will display the work in the museum’s Dennison Gallery, located on the museum’s main level.

Butler Director Dr. Louis Zona stated, “Peter Maier is one of the greatest living realist painters using modern day technology; he has extended the traditions of realist masters Vermeer and Rembrandt, and the American legends Winslow Homer, Thomas Eakins and Edward Hopper. His work stops us in our tracks, engaging the viewer in wonder and awe. We are honored to be the first museum to show this work—the largest portrait of a horse ever created in paint.”

Peter Maier, born in 1945 in Brooklyn, New York, is the son of immigrants. He grew up in a multi-ethnic environment; from his earliest memories, art was his driving passion. At age 18, “Pete” was selected to work on the sculpture for the 1964 New York World’s Fair. After serving in Vietnam, Maier went to work for GM during that company’s heyday. (His imprint can be found on a number of their classic designs.) During these years, the young prodigy rose o the level of senior designer, yet his passion for creating art drove him to the fine art world. With his maverick approach, he forged a new pathway in realist painting.

Away from the mainstream of the art world, in a studio in rural Buck Hill Falls, Peter Maier has quietly worked at revolutionizing American Realism. He combines innate artistic genius with the development of a self–generated, groundbreaking technique that blurs realism with reality, making his larger than life paintings startling in their presence and their vision.

Peter Maier has been painting and selling works of art since 1980. Recently, his work was the subject of two simultaneous solo exhibits at the Louis K. Meisel and the Bernaducci/Meisel galleries in Manhattan. The Butler’s Trumbull branch in Howland is currently hosting an exhibition of Photorealism, and two of Maier’s works are also included in that summer exhibition.