PAUL GEORGES b. 1923, Portland, OR; d. 2002, Isigny-sur Mer, Normandy, France
to paint responses to contemporary trends and events,
Throughout his working life, Paul Georges explored
including the AIDS epidemic, as well as denunciations of
figure painting, still life, landscape, self-portraiture, and
religious extremism and urban homelessness. His political
group portraits with references to mythology, art history,
paintings were often the target of critical attacks from
and contemporary politics. He spent his career traveling
conservative critics, as he also combined them with alle-
between a farmhouse in Normandy, France, and down-
gories teeming with beautiful women floating naked in
town New York, and he was known to have shuttled his
Tiepolo skies.
works-in-progress between both locations. A decorated World War II veteran, Georges studied, postwar, with Hans Hofmann in the United States. He also studied in Paris at the Académie de la Grande Chaumière and the Atelier Fernand Léger.
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study of JFK’s 1963 Dallas motorcade, and he continued
Among his many awards are the Whitney Museum of American Art’s 1966 Neysa McMein Purchase Award, and the National Academy Museum’s 1983 Andrew Carnegie Prize for the 158th Annual Exhibition, and its 1991 Gladys Emerson Cook Prize for the 166th Annual Exhibition. His
Georges’ paintings combine painterly French Modernism,
work can be found in the permanent collections of the
Rococo exuberance, and New York street attitude. In the
Museum of Modern Art and the Whitney Museum of
1960s, he felt compelled to respond to the decade’s social
American Art in New York City; the Smithsonian Amer-
and political turmoil, often in the form of large-scale his-
ican Art Museum, Washington, DC; and the J. Paul Getty
tory paintings. His first overtly political work was a modest
Museum, Los Angeles, California.
