About the artist:
American artist, printmaker and sculptor, one of the most celebrated and noted artists for his floral works of art.
A graduate of the Tyler School of Art at Temple University in Philadelphia, Lowell Blair Nesbitt also attended the
Royal College of Art in London, where he worked in stained glass and etching.
A colleague and friend of some of the most influential shapers of 20th Century art, including Robert
Mapplethorpe, Andy Warhol, Roy Lichtenstein, and Robert Indiana, Nesbitt is best known for his "floral"
paintings, in which gargantuan images of irises, roses, lilies and other flowers were depicted in close-up, so that
their petals seemed to fill the canvas. Because of these, Nesbitt enjoyed a great deal of public popularity, which in
1981 led to the United States Postal Service issuing four stamps based on his hyper-realist works. He also
served as the official artist for the space flights of Apollo 9 and Apollo 13.
During the 1960s, aside from his paintings, Nesbitt was working on the production of printed graphics, including
seriographs and engravings.
Described as one of the Photo Realists, in actuality his images - which were loosely painted and boldly
abbreviated - were far too interpretively distorted to be so considered. Among the subjects of these works were
studio interiors, articles of clothing, piles of shoes and groupings of fruits and vegetables. In addition, he also
painted his dog, a Rottweiler named Eric, and the Neo-Classical facades of SoHo's 19th-century cast-iron
buildings, as well as several of Manhattan's major bridges.
In 1976, Nesbitt bought the building of former police stables as a studio and called it "Old Stable" where he
worked and often had meetings with friends and well-known artists. After artist's death the "Old Stable" studio
was purchased by fashion designer Diane von Furstenberg who used it for her primary design studio and inner
city living area.
Lowell Blair Nesbitt's paintings, drawings and prints are included in the collections of Metropolitan Museum, New
York, the Museum of Modern Art (MoMa), National Gallery of Art, Washington DC, and the Philadelphia Museum
of Art.
