Chuck Close

American, b.1940. Chuck Close revolutionized painting and specifically portraiture with his signature style of photorealism and gridded painting structure. Close was born with dyslexia and prospagnosia, a neuromuscular disorder that causes the inability to recognize faces. This made traditional learning challenging therefore he turned to art and eventually earned his MFA from Yale University in 1964. It was there that he started developing his new style that pushed forward the concept of Pointilism except instead of using dots of color, Close used blocks of color to create pixels. He began painting large photorealistic portraits of his freinds in shades of gray then experimented with the printing style of using only black, cyan, yellow and magenta as well as applying the paint in a grid structure. In 1988, Close sustained a seizure which caused trauma to his spinal cord, leaving him paralyzed but through physical therapy and custom braces, he regained enough movement in his arms to continue painting portraits, though slightly more abstract.