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About

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Christopher Zmijewski

Born in Buffalo, NY

Lives & works in Cherry Hill New Jersey

 

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Chris Zmijewski’s realist oil paintings depict urban and landscape scenes.  He often paints on a large, almost life size canvas.  While his work touches many aspects of photorealism, his point of view is not that of a photo realist, but rather that of a painterly realist.  In describing his work, the New Art Examiner, wrote, “. . . [his] paintings of the Philadelphia cityscape, accurately rendered with cool detachment,  but with occasional areas of thick, sensuous paint that seem at odds with the artist’s camera-like remove from his subject matter. . .  Like Hopper, Zmijewski attempts to express urban loneliness.”

 

 

Zmijewski’s work, having been compared to that of Estes, has been dominating the Philadelphia scene for years.  His strong vertical compositional devices in the form of traffic lights and street signs seem to bring control and order to the chaos of city life  His style of painting, which has gained him much acclaim in this area, exemplifies a mastery of capturing cityscapes with warm painterly realism..  Zmijewski’s  painting has always been purely about the physical act of painting — how paint slides on the canvas, paper, wood — the act of painting.  His strong vertical compositional devices bring control and order to the chaos of city life.

 

Spending exten­sive time in France painting over the years, he has conducted painting excursions of the impressionist countryside in and around Paris, where he has become the liaison to the En Plein Air School of Painting in Paris.  Those paintings painted en plein air while in France, show the sim­plistic style which can only be captured with this technique which involves observation, simplifying, composition, clean colors, atmospheric per­spective and outdoor composition.

 

Capturing the tranquility of the virgin snow, Zmijewski has combined the use of thick, sensuous paint against a background of stark beauty to create scenes of frigid serenity.

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BORN                  Buffalo, New York:  1958

 

EDUCATION        BFA, University of Pennsylvania, 1983

                                    Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, 1980

 

AWARDS/

SCHOLARSHIPS   J. Henry Schiedt Memorial Traveling Scholarship,                                       PAFA, 1980

                                    Edna Pennypacker Stauffer Memorial, PAFA, 1979

                                    First Place, Adam Styka Memorial, 1975

                                    Grant, NJ State Council on the Arts, 1983

                                    Senate and General Assembly of the State of NJ,                                       1999, Applause Award as Outstanding Contributing                                   Artist

 

EXHIBITIONS       1980, Current Representational Painting in

                                    Philadelphia, Federal Courthouse, Philadelphia and                                   Gross-McCleaf Gallery

                  1981, Exhibition – On the Road, Gross-McCleaf      Gallery, Philadelphia

                  1983, Healing Process Through Art, N.J. State        Council on the Arts

                  1985, Six Realist Painters, Gross-McCleaf 

                  Gallery, Philadelphia

                  1980-2003, Consecutive One-Man Exhibition of      Work, Gross-McCleaf Gallery, Philadelphia, PA

                  1991, Realism Painting—The Ultimate Illusion,        Abington Art Center and Glassboro State College

                  1996, Galerie CHABIN, 4 et 6, rue du Mont-Denis,                    Paris, France

                  1998, Through the Heart of the City, Phila. Art 

                  Alliance, Phila.,PA 

                  2001, City Hall at 100, Art in City Hall, Philadelphia

                  2004, Philadelphia, Gross-McCleaf Gallery

 

COLLECTIONS     Fidelity Bank; Ballard, Spahr, Andrews & Ingersoll; Continental Bank; CIGNA Collection; Burlington County Memorial Hospital; Provident Bank; Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania; Spector  Gadon & Rosen, P.C.; Wolf, Block, Schorr & Solis-Cohen; Jack Kellmer Company; Vollmer Associates; Federal Reserve Bank; United Way of Southeastern Pennsylvania; The Union League of Philadelphia (sculpture of General Alexander M. Haig, Jr. in permanent collection); many other corporate and private collections.

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