Jack Vettriano

Jack Vettriano (born November 17, 1951 in Methil , Fife , Scotland , real name: Jack Hoggan) is a British painter . He became known to a wider public in an exhibition at the Royal Scottish Academy in 1989, followed by successful exhibitions in Edinburgh , London , Hong Kong , Johannesburg and New York . The atmosphere of his pictures is strongly reminiscent of film noir . He has studios in Scotland and London and is represented by the Portland Gallery .

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Vettriano was born under the name Jack Hoggan in a mining community in Fife, Scotland. At the age of sixteen he began training as a miner. For his 21st birthday, a friend gave him a paint box with watercolors, which prompted Vettriano to teach himself to paint, in particular by studying the works in the nearby Kirkcaldy Museum and Art Gallery, but also by using textbooks and painting instructions. Vettriano began to train his technical skills by copying works by Monet, Caravaggio and Dali, among others. Now employed as a personnel manager, the painter Jack Hoggan had his first exhibition in Bahrain.

His career as a professional painter didn't begin until 1988, at the age of 37, when he submitted two paintings to the Royal Scottish Academy's annual exhibition, which gallery owners discovered and bought on the first day of the exhibition. When Jack Hoggan began to pursue a career as a professional painter with his own motifs, he chose the (slightly changed) maiden name of his mother as his stage name "Vettriano" to set himself apart from the copyist Jack Hoggan.

Vettriano had his first solo exhibition in May 1992 in London under the title "Tales of Love and Other Stories". Further exhibitions in galleries and museums in London, Newcastle, Edinburgh, Monte-Carlo and Hong Kong followed.

Vettriano's work was shown for the first time in New York in September 2001 when 21 of his paintings were exhibited at the International 20th Century Arts Fair as part of the Armory Art Show, New York's largest art fair.

Vettriano moved first to Edinburgh and later to London. In 2003 he was awarded the Order of the British Empire by Queen Elizabeth II .

In May 2015, the painter announced that he was expecting a longer recovery period after a shoulder injury and that no new pictures could be expected from him until further notice.

success

Jack Vettriano is considered the most successful contemporary British painter. His best-known painting, The Singing Butler, painted in 1992, had been rejected by the Royal Academy's summer exhibition. The Scottish Arts Council, to which Vettriano subsequently submitted the picture, did not even consider it necessary to reply. Vettrianos then sold the gallery owner to a private collector for £ 3,500. Four years later the painting was resold for £ 5,000. In 2004, the “Singing Butler” sold for 744,500 British pounds at auction.

The painting "Bluebird in Bonneville" was auctioned off by Sotheby’s in 2007 for £ 469,000. This picture is part of a series of seven paintings that the designer Sir Terence Conran commissioned Vettriano in 1997 to furnish his Bluebird Club in Chelsea.

Vettriano art collectors are believed to include Jack Nicholson , Madonna , Sir Terence Conran , Sir Tim Rice , Robbie Coltrane, and Sir Alex Ferguson .

An exhibition with over 100 of his pictures in the Kelvingrove Art Gallery and Museum in Glasgow was visited by more than 123,000 people between September 2013 and February 2014, setting a record number of visitors for the museum.

style

Vettriano's painting style is reminiscent of the style of the new objectivity that developed in German painting in the 1920s, with influences from the British variety of Pop Art . With the new objectivity, Vettriano has the seemingly naturalistic style of painting in common, which, however, incorporates alienating and idealizing elements that were typical of British Pop Art. For example, clothing, furnishings or buildings often seem to date from the 30s or 40s. In addition, Vettriano often constructs scenes that are unusual or grotesque (couples dancing on the beach) or that are gloomy or sexually charged (e.g. the paintings from the “Along Came a Spider” series).

It is typical of Vettriano that he almost exclusively paints people who often look like they are in a film scene. Similar to Edward Hopper's , his images look like still images from a film that tells a story that happened before and that will continue.

In an interview, Vettriano said about his pictures:

“I paint what moves me. These people that I seem to surround myself with are a bunch of bad guys ... But you know, I love this very world - a world of sex and hedonism. I love this because I'm a storyteller.
("What I paint is what moves me. These people that I seem to surround myself with… a bunch of no-goods… but you know, I just like that world - a world of sexiness and hedonism. I like that because I ' m a storyteller. ") "

- Jack Vettriano :

Vettriano gets the ideas for his pictures from lyrics or newspaper articles. When two or three ideas have crystallized, he hires a model (he used to depict the male model himself), takes photos of the scene and then paints from the photos as a template.

Book publications by Jack Vettriano

• Lovers and Other Strangers: Paintings by Jack Vettriano . Chrysalis Impact, 2002.
• Jack Vettriano: A Life . Pavilion, 2006. New edition 2011, ISBN 978-1-862059443 .
• Studio Life: An Intimate Portrait of the Painter . Anova Books, 2008.
• Women in Love . Anova Books, 2009.
• A Man's World . Anova Books, 2009.

Web links

• Official website of Jack Vettriano
• He's our favorite artist. So why do the galleries hate him so much? , The Guardian , January 11, 2004
• Jack Vettriano's publishing website

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1. ^ Exhibition "Tales of Love" . Archived from the original on September 25, 2010. Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. Retrieved March 18, 2010. 
2. ↑ exhibitions . Archived from the original on September 24, 2010. Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. Retrieved March 18, 2010. 
3. ^ Exhibition "New York Armory Art Show" . Archived from the original on September 25, 2010. Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. Retrieved March 18, 2010. 
4. ^ ^{A b c d} Lynn Barber: His dark materials . The Observer. June 13, 2004. Retrieved January 31, 2010.
5. ↑ ^{a b} Jack Vettriano hangs up paintbrush due to shoulder injury in: The Guardian, May 29, 2015, accessed May 30, 2015
6. ↑ ^{a b} Vettriano painting sells for nearly £ 500,000 at auction . The Scotsman. August 30, 2007. Accessed January 31, 2010.
7. ^ David Smith: He's our favorite artist. So why do the galleries hate him so much? . The Observer. January 11, 2004. Retrieved January 31, 2010.
8. ^ Anne MacKenzie: 'I paint what moves me - sexiness' - Jack Vettriano interview . The Scotsman. March 16, 2008. Retrieved January 31, 2010.