Michael Zavros: Look Back Curator and writer Hamish Sawyer reflects on some of the defining works from Michael Zavros’ career. By Hamish Sawyer
Ferragamo, 2000 oil on board 20.4 x 14.8 cm
Michael Zavros first gained attention with his series of intimately scaled, photo-realist paintings of luxury male fashion. Ferragamo was shown as part of Primavera at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney in 2000.
AUGUST 2020
The Italian fashion house’s signature loafers are represented in their perfect showroom state, mirroring the technical precision of Zavros’ rendering of them. If anything, the painting is more perfect than the objects it depicts. Miniature paintings were popular with European royalty during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Prohibitively expensive, they were the luxury goods of their time. Zavros has returned to the miniature format regularly over the past two decades.
