Rick Krieger Sold at Auction Prices

b. 1953 -

Rick Krieger was born 1953 in Port Jefferson,New York. A healthy distrust of authority nurtured by 12 years of catholic school education lead him to enroll in art school. He attended the School of Visual Arts in New York City from 1971 to 1975 when he received his BFA. He studied painting and drawing with the “paintoonist” Jerry Moriarty who’s passion for jazz improvisation and his method of “drawing from your head” set Rick on the course that would define his life and art for the next 36 years: his personal and idiosyncratic study of the human figure.

It was Ricks enthusiasm for the late figurative paintings of Phillip Guston that reinforced his commitment to the pictorial character of his own work. ”Seeing the Guston paintings convinced me that I had to develop a personal symbolism,a vocabulary that would allow me to make the art I wanted to make”. Ricks”what the fuck do I do now” moment occurred as it does for all art students soon after leaving school .The realization that he had no marketable skills and like his early role model Maynard G. Krebs a natural aversion to work forced him to confront the reality that the only one who would support the ludicrous work he felt compelled to produce was him. For the past 34 years he has accomplished this with a variety of jobs in and out the graphic arts.

Settling in New York in 1976 Rick worked and lived with his family in a loft on West 28 street between Broadway and 6th avenues(the original "tin pan alley),which at the time was a thriving community of artists and musicians.Concentrating on his paintings and drawings Rick also continued his study of music,accumulating a large collection of vinyl and learning to play the double bass and the saxophone. It was in this environment that his visual work really started to develope and his preoccupation with human form became the main focus of his art. He describes these early works as being “all about drawing”. Using his young son as his subject Rick created a series of large pastel drawings which were instrumental in establishing the distinctive shapes, forms and colors which Rick utilizes today.A series of large paintings on paper followed. Rick’s first one man show at Pictogram Gallery in the East Village provided him with the astute audience he needed to encourage his peculiar view of the human form. This show lead to many opportunities to show his work in the U.S. and abroad.With a cast of characters and objects in his visual inventory Rick continues to explore the figurative possibilities with drawings,paintings and sculpture