Andrew Stevovich

Fifty years of "essential" painting by the Austrian-born American figurative painter (1948).

Andrew Stevovich is a deceptive painter. His figures are flattened, and his interest is focused on the line that defines them. He rarely concedes to conventional tools like shading to express volume. The figures' inner states seem equally reticent. The repetitiveness of their forms appears to be decorative intent, and their apparent stillness has the same effect. We think we have identified a vocabulary of form, and having done so, conclude that this is at the heart of his work. And then we move on. But should we? Stevovich's work is complex and layered. His figures give up their secrets slyly.

Deeply rooted in the European painting tradition, Stevovich uses all of the tools developed over the last several centuries to animate his subjects. He borrows deeply from Renaissance painting and is attuned to the sensibility of the 19th century and to Americans pre-and post-war. These are the building blocks of his visual vocabulary. However, he is not an artist of historical quotation. All of these influences pass through the lens of his disciplined restraint to remarkable effect. Layers of activity move toward the surface of his paintings and are captured in a kind of stop motion, which makes even his busiest paintings seem so silent. He has developed an extraordinary collection of tools to animate his work and the figures in it, but he never relinquishes his severe constraint of them. This contradiction is purposeful and is at the core of understanding his work.

Beyond the Figure examines 120 of the artist's works painted over a period of 50 years. While it shows the full range of his development, it does so by looking at the dominant themes and typologies of his work rather than charting it chronologically. Stevovich has created a world, but he is not a realist. While people are his subject, line, colour, and form are his enduring interests.