GEORGE CONDO — Contemporary Painter Redefining the Human Psyche

George Condo (born 1957 in Concord, New Hampshire) is one of the most influential and singular voices in contemporary American art. A pioneering figure whose career spans over four decades, Condo is best known for developing what he famously termed “Artificial Realism” and later “Psychological Cubism,” innovative styles merging Old Master techniques with fractured, distorted, and psychologically charged subjects. His work occupies a compelling space between classical European portraiture and the raw immediacy of American pop culture, filtered through a lens of humor, anxiety, and surreal imagination.

Condo studied Art History and Music Theory at the University of Massachusetts in Lowell before relocating to New York City in 1979. There, he worked at Andy Warhol’s Factory, producing silkscreens and absorbing the intense creative culture that shaped the era. By the early 1980s, he became a defining figure in the East Village art scene, exhibiting in influential galleries and quickly gaining recognition for his unique fusion of Renaissance craftsmanship with cartoonish exaggeration, grotesque figuration, and psychological complexity.

Condo’s paintings and drawings often evoke the spirits of Rembrandt, Goya, Cézanne, and Picasso, yet he reanimates their aesthetic language in ways they never would have conceived, creating characters whose splintered faces and exaggerated physiognomies mirror the fractured emotional landscape of contemporary life. His portraits are at once elegant and monstrous, humorous and unsettling, embodying the contradictions of the human psyche. As Calvin Tomkins wrote in The New Yorker, Condo “used the language of his predecessors… and applied it to subjects they would never have painted.”

Condo’s impact on contemporary art is profound and internationally recognized. His major retrospective, “Mental States” (2011), debuted at the New Museum in New York and traveled to the Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen (Rotterdam), the Hayward Gallery (London), and the Schirn Kunsthalle (Frankfurt). Another significant survey, “The Way I Think” (2017), was presented at The Phillips Collection in Washington, D.C., later traveling to Denmark.

He has exhibited in multiple editions of the Venice Biennale (2013, 2019) and the Whitney Biennial (1987, 2010). His work is widely collected by leading global institutions, including the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), The Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Whitney Museum of American Art, Tate Modern, Centre Pompidou, The Broad, and many others. Condo has lectured at esteemed universities such as Columbia, Yale, and Harvard, where he taught a six-month course titled Painting Memory.

Curator Laura Hoptman has noted that Condo “opened the door for artists to use the history of painting in a way that was not appropriation,” cementing his legacy as a transformative figure who bridged tradition and radical innovation.

Explore George Condo at DTR Modern Galleries

DTR Modern Galleries proudly presents select works by George Condo within its contemporary program, connecting collectors with one of the most defining painters of the 21st century. His psychologically complex, masterfully crafted works remain highly sought after and can be explored through our gallery locations in Boston, New York City, Palm Beach, and Washington, D.C.