John KACERE (1920-1999) ✿

American Photorealist Painter, John Kacere was born on the 23rd of June in 1920 in Walker in the state Iowa. Beginning in 1928 he was quite active in music, but then in 1934 he decides to become an artist. Between 1938 and 1942 he studies at the commercial school of Arts in Zurich. At school he discovers a collection of art books and he becomes a passionate of Holbein and Rembrandt. In 1942 he has his first personal exhibition at a gallery of the Library of Cedar Rapids after which he moves to California. In 1946 he registers to the University of Photography of the state Iowa that prepare him for his competence of the arts. He then meets and becomes friends with Paul Brach. Both work in the atelier of the engraver Mauricio Lasansky. He takes distance of the regional American artist in order to unite himself with the European Modernism. From 1950 to 1953 he is the assistant of the chair of the University of Manitoga at Winniweg in Canada. He starts with his researches that tend slightly to cubism and surrealism. In 1954 he travels frequently to New York, performs abstract expressionism and has his first personal exhibition at the Virginia Zabriskie Gallery in New York. Between 1955 and 1958 he meets several artists of the second generation of Abstract Expressionism, such as Joan Mitchell, Helen Frankenthaler, Robert Rauschemberg, and Willem De Kooning. In 1958 he moves to New York without any money. The Abstract Expressionism makes him doubt. He re-encounters Norman Bloom, friend of Sam Francis. In 1960 he appeals to the geometric structures conceived by Albers. In 1962 then he travels together with Paul Brach to Europe. He remains fascinated, in Italy, by the monumental painting of Botticelli, Mantegna, Piero della Francesca. In the years after, Kacere starts to work with the female body in his artwork and photography. In 1981 he exhibits for the first time in France at the Galerie Jean-Pierre Lavignes in Paris. His work is very appreciated by the French public and collectors.