Perhaps Carroll Dunham is best known as the father of Lena Dunham, but one look at his works and you will think the same as I did when I first saw his work…..” this is a great artist”
I love the comic aspects in his works in a way i also like the Al Copley paintings.
He was Initially inspired by Pop Art, Abstract Expressionism, and Surrealism, at the very beginnings of his career, Carroll Dunham painted abstract geometric compositions on a wooden surface. His characteristic was the using of exotic veneers, such was elm, oak, rosewood or pin. Respecting the natural pattern of the surface, he was creating vibrant compositions. Spurred on by the revival of interest in Surrealism in the 1970s, Dunham began to make abstract, biomorphic paintings reminiscent of the work of Arshile Gorky and André Masson, executed with a comic twist enhanced by lurid colours and the suggestion of contemporary psychedelia. Recognizable cartoonish details from his early artistic beginnings turned into the larger formats of bodily shapes resembling lips or teeth recently became more figurative, displaying striking male and female caricatures placed in familiar, but at the same time fictional surroundings.
www.ftn-books.com has the catalogue raisonne of his prints available.
