In memory of Richard M. Powers

Biography

 

Powers was born in 1921 in Chicago, Illinois.

Before the Second World War, after graduating from St. Ignatius High School in Chicago, he studied at the Chicago Art Institute, the Fine Arts College of the University of Illinois and at Haddon Sundbloom School, known for its style “Relentless Realism”.

During the second part of the 40´s, he studied with Julian Levi and Adja Yunkers at the New School for Social Research of New York and painted on Monhegan Island, Maine and in Vermont with the American Barbizonist and disciple of Winslow Homer, Jay Connaway N.A. (National Academy).

He first exhibited in New York at the Museum of Modern Art in 1951. He was represented by the Frank Rehn Gallery in New York from 1951 to 1981.

He exhibited at the METROPOLITAN MUSEUM, the NATIONAL ACADEMY OF DESIGN y the WHITNEY and GUGGENHEIM in New York and the CORCORAN and NATIONAL MUSEUM in Washington D.C. as well as many regional galleries in Boston, Philadelphia (PENNSYLVANIA ACADEMY OF FINE ARTS), Austin, Texas and Chicago. He exhibited in Scheneatelis, N.Y. in 1992 and at the ANNEXT GALLERY in New York in 1994.

He participated in trips sponsored by the U.S. Air Force to paint in Turkey and Greece and also painted in Mexico, South American New Zealand, Tahiti, Fiji, Ireland and Spain.

In Europe he exhibited at the London SCIENCE FICTION SHOW in 1968 and a show on Surrealism in the U.S. which commenced in Paris, travelling to all the principal European cities during 1981 and 1982. He exhibited several times at the GALERÍA MACARRÓN, in Madrid, Spain: in 1987 his show was on themes inspired by a trip to New Zealand, Tahiti and Fiji and in 1989 studies of composers of classic and contemporary music and the work of Zurbarán and the Easter processions of Seville. In 1993 the show at MACARRON was inspired by a trip to Ireland, the land of his ancestors.

He was renowned for his science fiction, fantasy and surrealist painting. The late Kingston, Jamaica, Eugene Hyde, described his work, on the occasion of his show at the JOHN PEARTREE GALLERY of Kingston, as “Absurrealism: abstract surrealism with a subset of the absurd”.

Revine Metzel said, in AMERICAN ARTIST, that “his originality is not merely of a concept, point of view or development. His work makes an impact… a person realizes that he states precisely what needed to be said”.

He died in 1995 in Madrid, where he had spent long periods painting during the last years of his life.

Powers was inducted into the Science Fiction Hall of Fame of the Science Fiction Museum in Seattle in June 2008.

His Works

     

 

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