In December 1983, Charlie Hanavich was a young and talented painter, born in Atlanta (Georgia, USA). Today he lives in Miami, Florida, where it has consolidated his importance as an artist. The turning point of his life, that leads him to choose painting as a mean of communication and transmission of his passion, takes place in his last years of college.
In fact, despite having shown interest for art as still child, he had never had very clear ideas on the way forward. Having studied advertising and art history at the University of Alabama, in 2006 he moved to New York. In this city his life takes the right direction.
As he himself says, 2006 is the turn-key year. He begins to regularly visit the MoMA (Museum of Modern Art) in which is housed one that, among over 150,000 works, is considered one of the best collections of modern art in the world. In front of masterpieces by artists like Cézanne, Chagall, Dalí but especially Picasso, Hanavich finds his inspiration. He falls in love with a painting, just by Picasso, The girl before a mirror, from which so much is enchanted to think of purchasing it. Back home in Atlanta, first he buys a large canvas, paints and brushes: he understands that it is through painting that he wants to succeed, despite never having taken real lessons.
His paintings are easily recognizable. His “trademark”? The grid technique, which reproduces portraits, close-ups of famous people, movie icons, music’s, fashion’s, science’s, such as Frank Sinatra, Anna Wintour or Albert Einstein. Their faces are made up of squares, where Hanavich composes and decomposes colors, lights and shadows, innovating and renewing a traditional painting technique as that of the portrait, featuring popular and familiar faces in an unexpected ways. The simplicity of the genius.
Anna Wintour Painting in Miami Design District
Today Charlie Hanavich lives and paints in Miami; benefiting from the influence and power of the artistic scenario of the South Florida. At his website (www.charliehanavich.com) you can get an idea of his work: Iris Apfel, Lady Diana, Karl Lagerfeld, indeed remarkable, not forgetting portraits of Dalí, Kandinsky and Picasso.
The works of Charlie Hanavich are exhibited every December at Art Basel Miami Beach, winter home of the important modern and contemporary art fair, held since 1970 in Basle, Swiss.
The boy who was looking for his place in the world, fantasizing before Picasso at the MoMA, has become a successful painter: observing and reflecting.
Article by Arianna Mele
English Translation by Piergiorgio Mancini
