Best Art Book and Best of Show - 2018 New Mexico-Arizona Book Award
Born in San Diego in 1946 and raised in the American Southwest,
painter Paul Pletka has created a body of work that owes much to
the West of his childhood, and more to the West of his imagination.
Infused with an operatic sense of theater and drama, his paintings
conjure scenes from the cultures, history, and religions of the
American West and Mexico - diffused, as Pletka writes, ""through
the lens of personal experiences, dreams, research, and ancestral
memory."" In Paul Pletka: Imagined Wests, the first book on this
major American artist in over thirty years, readers will encounter
the full range of Pletka's oeuvre through more than eighty color
reproductions of his best-known and most influential works. Images
of warriors and shamans are paired with depictions of George
Armstrong Custer, Christian saints, and the lost gods of North and
South America, their forms rendered in a distinctive style that
mixes classical drawing and expressionist distortion with elements
of surrealism and European symbolism. An artist statement and notes
on selected paintings provide rare insight into Pletka's creative
process, and an introductory essay by art historian Amy Scott
discusses how Pletka's studies of indigenous cultures of the
American West and Mexico, as well as art historical and critical
influences, have informed his work. Complex, mysterious, and
mesmerizing, Pletka's paintings are designed to make it almost
impossible to look away. In their boldly conceived subject matter,
vivid color, and ethnographic detail, these works - and their
creator - are true originals in the rich artistic landscape of the
American West.
General
Imprint: |
University of Oklahoma Press
|
Country of origin: |
United States |
Release date: |
September 2017 |
Authors: |
Amy Scott
|
Contributors: |
Paul Pletka
|
Foreword by: |
James K. Ballinger
|
Dimensions: |
330 x 305 x 29mm (L x W x T) |
Format: |
Hardcover - Cloth over boards
|
Pages: |
248 |
ISBN-13: |
978-0-8061-5721-4 |
Categories: |
Books >
Arts & Architecture >
General
|
LSN: |
0-8061-5721-6 |
Barcode: |
9780806157214 |
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