John De Andrea

John De Andrea (born November 24, 1941, Denver, Colorado, U.S.) is an American Super-realist sculptor known for his detailed life-size female nudes depicted in naturalistic poses. He is associated with the Photo-realist and Verist art movements.

De Andrea began studying art at the University of Colorado at Boulder, where he earned a B.F.A. in 1965. He continued his studies at the University of New Mexico in Albuquerque from 1966 to 1968. Two years later, De Andrea had his first solo exhibition, at OK Harris Gallery in New York City. That was followed by his inclusion in several important group exhibitions, including “Radical Realism” at Chicago’s Museum of Contemporary Art (1971) and Documenta V (1972) and VII (1982) in Kassel, Germany.

De Andrea distinguished himself from other artists working in the hyperrealistic or Photo-realist aesthetic—Duane Hanson and George Segal—with a disinterest in social commentary. De Andrea achieved an extreme degree of detail by casting his works directly from life and then applying paint to the cast in a highly illusionist way that erased any sign of his process or materials. He focused almost exclusively on representations of individual female nudes, such as Dorothy (1969–70), Model in Repose (1981), Linda (1983), and Ariel I (2011). However, he also on occasion created multifigured works—Clothed Artist and Model (1976), for example, which shows the model partially encased in plaster and offers the viewer insight into De Andrea’s art-making process. With their flat expressions, the figures do not engage with or acknowledge the viewer.

De Andrea’s primary sculptural material was fibreglass, but he also worked with polyester resin, polyvinyl acetate, and polychrome bronze. He was known to incorporate natural hair into his pieces as well, amplifying the sense of realism. Though his subject matter stayed the same, the hyperrealistic aesthetic and nuanced posing made each sculpture unique.

A retrospective of De Andrea’s work was organized by the Kunst Haus Wien (1994), Vienna, and in 2016 he and his daughter, Ariel, had a joint exhibition. His art was collected by such institutions as the Art Institute of Chicago; the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; and the Pompidou Centre, Paris.