Chuck Close (b. 1940, Monroe, WA; d. 2021, Oceanside, NY) is known for his innovative conceptual portraiture, depicting his family, his friends, himself, and fellow artists. Beginning his career in the 1960’s as a Photorealist, Close soon pivoted toward an approach that deconstructed color and form into modular elements, while maintaining a remarkable fidelity to their human subjects. This path of exploration lead Close to a deep engagement with additive processes of image-making that expanded beyond his painting practice and into ground-breaking work with printmaking, photography, and collage, among myriad other techniques.
Close has been featured in over 500 group exhibitions and has been the subject of over 200 solo exhibitions in more than twenty countries. He received his first major museum exhibition Recent Work at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, in 1971; and his first retrospective Close Portraits in 1980 was organized by the Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, which traveled to the St. Louis Art Museum, Missouri; Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago; closing at the Whitney Museum of American Art. He has since been the subject of over twenty traveling exhibitions, including Chuck Close, The Museum of Modern Art, New York (1998); Prints: Process and Collaboration, Blaffer Art Gallery, University of Houston (2003–2016); Self Portraits 1967–2005, Walker Art Center, Minneapolis (2005); Paintings 1968–2006, Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofia, Madrid (2007); Photographs, Parrish Art Museum, Southampton, New York (2016). Chuck Close’s work is in the permanent collections of major institutions worldwide, including the National Portrait Gallery, Washington, D.C., which owns more than 40 of his works. In 2000, Close was presented with the prestigious National Medal of Arts by President Clinton. Close was a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters, served on the board of many arts organizations, and was appointed by President Obama to serve on The President’s Committee on the Arts and the Humanities.
Chuck Close maintained a publishing relationship with Pace Editions for over 40 years, beginning in the late 1970’s until his death in 2021.