Chuck Close

Chuck Close was an American painter, photographer, and printmaker known for very large portraits of himself and other people, often developed from photographs. Born in Monroe, Washington, he studied at the University of Washington and earned an MFA from Yale University in 1964, then continued on a Fulbright grant at the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna. After teaching at the University of Massachusetts, he moved to New York City in 1967 and had his first New York solo show in 1970. Working from gridded photographs, he built images through methodical, repeated marks. He made prints throughout his career, using mezzotint, etching, woodcut, linocut, and silkscreen, and later produced tapestries and watercolor prints. His work appeared in the Whitney Biennial in 1979, and the Museum of Modern Art held a major retrospective in 1998. In 2010 he was commissioned to create mosaics for a New York City subway station, and he received the National Medal of Arts in 2000.