Tara

DeAndrea’s hyperrealistic sculptures belong to the American Photorealist movement in the 1970s, alongside such artists as George Segal and Duane Hanson. Reacting against the abstract art of the time, DeAndrea found his niche in a return to realism in the most literal sense within the longstanding tradition of figurative sculpture.

Finding inspiration in Classical and Renaissance sculpture, DeAndrea’s work is primarily comprised of full-sized female figures in the nude, cast from live models to render every minute and intimate detail. These sculptures range in medium from fiberglass to polyvinyl resin to bronze, as seen here.

From the positive casts of his models, DeAndrea then painstakingly applies skin-tone acrylics and oil paints to his sculptures, adding hair and custom glass eyes to give the viewer the sense of a living, breathing presence. DeAndrea’s use of polychromy reminds us that ancient statues were themselves painted. Pliny provides important evidence for this tradition, noting that the Greek sculptor Praxiteles was most proud of his works that had been tinted by the painter Nicias, “so much value did he assign to his coloring of surfaces.” (35.133)

(Hannah L. Master, “Wonder and Wakefulness: The Nature of Pliny the Elder,” exhibition organized by the Herbert F. Johnson Museum of Art, curated by Andrew C. Weislogel and Verity J. Platt, presented at the Johnson Museum January 21–June 11, 2023)