BIOGRAPHY
Photo; Robert Curtis
"I believe in the practice and philosophy of what we have agreed to call magic, in what I must call the evocation of spirits, though I do not know what they are, in the power of creating magical illusions, in the visions of truth in the depths of the mind when the eyes are closed; and I believe. . . that the borders of our mind are ever shifting, and that many minds can flow into one another, as it were, and create or reveal a single mind, a single energy. . . and that our memories are part of one great memory, the memory of Nature herself."
W. B. YEATS
Ideas of Good and Evil
Don Perlis (b. 1941) is a renowned New York painter whose career spans decades. He was the youngest member of an artistic group reviving representational painting in the 1960s that included Philip Pearlstein, Al Leslie, Jack Beal, William Baily, Paul Georges, and Lennart Anderson. Perlis worked as an assistant to painter and filmmaker Alfred Leslie prior to his debut exhibition at the landmark Whitney Museum
show, 22 Realists, curated by James Monte. Following the show’s success, Perlis became the youngest artist to show at Graham Gallery. Since then, he has held over twenty solo exhibitions in New York, as well as dozens of group shows in the U.S. and abroad, including at the National Academy of Design, the American Academy of Arts and Letters, the Queens Museum, and the Cleveland Museum of Art.
Perlis’s work is distinguished by the use of traditional techniques. He works in oils, eschews photography as reference, and utilizes a continual space based on perception and imagination. Perlis’s oeuvre encompasses landscapes, portraits, and expansive narrative compositions, and draws from a diverse range of inspiration, encompassing opera, classic literature, and mythology. At age 40, Perlis began making his first works dealing with contemporary social issues. In 2020, “Floyd,” his painting depicting the death of George Floyd was exhibited on billboards in major cities across the U.S., including in Times Square. Perlis’s contributions to the art world have garnered extensive acclaim, with coverage in leading art magazines and prominent publications including The New York Times, The Los Angeles Times, and The Guardian.
Perlis has been teaching art for over four decades, as a professor at the Fashion Institute of Technology and previously at Pratt Institute. A lifelong New Yorker, he was born and raised in the Bronx and currently works and resides in Brooklyn.