John Baeder
| John Baeder | |
|---|---|
| Born | 1938 South Bend, Indiana |
| Nationality | American |
| Education | Auburn University, Auburn, Alabama |
| Known for | Painting, Photography |
| Movement | Photorealism |
John Baeder (born December 24, 1938) is an American painter closely associated with the Photorealist movement. He is best known for his detailed paintings of American roadside diners and eateries.
John Baeder was born in 1938 in South Bend, Indiana, but was raised in Atlanta, Georgia. The interest in small towns across America began when he was young by photographing old cars and other relics with a Baby Brownie camera. While attending Auburn University in the late 1950s, he made frequent trips between Atlanta and Alabama, which drew his attention to rural landscapes and roadside diners.
He started working as an art director in Atlanta for a branch of a New York advertising agency in 1960, and subsequently moved to New York City in 1964. He went on to have a successful career in advertising through the early 1970s, while continuing to paint, draw and photograph on his own time.
One of his ad agency offices in New York City was located near the Museum of Modern Art. The museum’s photograph department became a source of inspiration for him, especially the work of artists such as Berenice Abbott, Walker Evans, Ben Shahn, and other photographers of the Farm Security Administration. In the late 1960s he also started collecting postcards of roadside America such as diners, gas stations, campsites, and motels.
Baeder left the advertising field in 1972 to pursue his artistic career full-time. The same year, OK Harris Gallery in New York began exhibiting his artworks.
Since then, he has had more than thirty solo exhibitions at art galleries such as OK Harris Gallery in New York; Modernism Gallery in San Francisco, Thomas Paul Fine Art in Los Angeles and Cumberland Gallery in Nashville, as well as a traveling retrospective exhibition titled “Pleasant Journeys and Good Eats along The Way,” which started at the Morris Museum of Art in Augusta, Georgia in December 2007.
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