Derek GORES ~ Collage Portraits ✿

Derek Gores is an American artist born in New York in 1971. He received his BFA from The Rhode Island School of Design in 1993, for the creation of his collage works on canvas, Derek recycles magazines, labels and materials of each kind types. Colors, shapes and styles are then classified and arranged to form sought-after and appreciated canvases.

Inspired by famous artists such as Gustave Klimt, Egon Schiele and Max Ernst, Derek Gores creates works with classical notes but with a very modern accent. Practiced first by the Cubists, then by the Dadaists and then by the Surrealists, collage evolved according to the practices of the artists. Gores has the particularity of composing canvases contemplating himself in two phases: up close we see an abstract work composed of various geographical forms, and three steps back we witness a combination of elements that create an image, a face, a person.

From the early 1910s, the cubists Georges Braque and Pablo Picasso (with his Nature morte à la chaise canée - 1912 ) incorporated the first disparate fragments into their paintings, which they pasted onto their canvases (kraft paper, newsprint, colors and sometimes partitions). In the 1940s, the use of collage became a very common practice, after its manifestation in Dadaism and Surrealism (Edward Verrall Lucas, George Morrow, Max Ernst...etc.) and the public becomes familiar with this technique that he finds in numerous exhibitions.