T. E. Breitenbach
| T. E. Breitenbach | |
|---|---|
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| Born |
Thomas E. Breitenbach July 29, 1951 Queens, New York, United States |
| Nationality | American |
| Education | Self-taught |
| Known for | Painting |
| Awards | Rome Prize Fellowship |
Thomas E. Breitenbach (born July 29, 1951 in Queens, New York) is a self-taught American artist best known for his painting Proverbidioms, a raucous and comical depiction of over 300 common proverbs and clichés. He also collaborated with Jim Morrison of The Doors, shortly before Morrison's death, on a painting intended for use on his An American Prayer album. Breitenbach studied architecture and fine arts (in an independent study program) at the University of Notre Dame, before leaving to become the youngest person to receive the Rome Prize Fellowship in visual arts. Breitenbach declined the second year of the fellowship and, inspired by the castles and museums of Europe, returned home determined to build a castle-studio to house his art and eventually become a museum. During the planning stages he painted Proverbidioms and later published it.
Breitenbach’s earliest works are dark allegories spurred by his vision of man’s nature as being hopelessly irrational and violent. Influenced by Carl Jung, Breitenbach's subjects are constructed using archetypal symbols and are intended to provoke strong emotional responses from the observer. Breitenbach emphasizes that these paintings are not surrealism, because surrealists tend to use personal and dream symbols which are not an effective form of language. He was awarded the Rome Prize in 1973 by the Society of Fellows of the American Academy in Rome in the visual arts category.
In 1974, Breitenbach started work on a painting of contemporary proverbs, idioms, and clichés, after feeling challenged by a review of Pieter Bruegel's sixteenth-century painting of Dutch proverbs, Netherlandish Proverbs, suggesting that language was particularly colorful "back then". This became Proverbidioms, his best-known work, completed in 1975 at the age of 24. This large painting illustrates over 300 common expressions like "You are what you eat", "butterflies in the stomach", "the rat race", and so on, and identifying the sayings became a kind of puzzle for his audience.Proverbidioms has been turned into a poster, jigsaw puzzle, and appeared on the TV show Beverly Hills, 90210 in a few episodes.
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