Artist: Kenny Scharf
Title: Unique Sculpture
Size: 27.25 x 5.5 x 5.5 Inches
Medium: Acrylic on Sculpted Resin Sculpture
Edition: Original
Year: Circa 1985 - 2015
Notes: Sculpture does show signs of age. Unsigned. Published in Purple Magazine Fall/Winter 2015 Issue 24 which shows a photo of the sculpture in the Artists Studio.
About: Kenny Scharf is a legendary American artist who was a pioneer in the iconic 1980s East Village street art scene in New York. Together with artists such as Keith Haring, Andy Warhol and Jean-Michel Basquiat, Scharf helped spearhead the aesthetics of the era, co-authoring arguably the most essential chapter in street art history by positioning it as an equal player on the contemporary art world’s main stage. Today, the Californian is widely recognized as one of the most important figures in the ‘Lowbrow Pop Surrealism’ art movement, which is characterized by abstract imagery merging with dreamy cartoon characters, and is rooted in comics, punk music, and graffiti and street culture.
Like many other children growing up during Pop Art's cultural boom in the 1960s, Scharf was greatly impacted by images of popular and commercial culture that permeated and shaped American collective consciousness. But, unlike other kids, Scharf's interests went beyond clipping out photographs from magazines to stick on his bedroom wall. Instead, he found joy in finding expression on the streets, where, with a spray paint can in hand, he could share his unique, Day-Glo, psychedelic pictures with the public.
In his works, Scharf employs a range of techniques, media and allusions to create hallucinatory compositions bursting with bright colors, bold patterns, and dreamlike metaphors, featuring a host of anthropomorphic creatures, extraterrestrial beings, and comic book motifs.