John sonsini biography
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He lives and works in Los Angeles, California.
Sonsini studied at California State University, he earned a bachelor’s degree in fine arts in 1975. His paintings are mainly oil on canvas.
His work is best known for his expressionistic portraits of Hispanic day laborers. He hires the models from Los Angeles work sites, whom he paid their usual hourly wages to pose in his studio. Sonsini's subjects are often placed against a glowing pastel sammanfattning empty background that provokes an interesting play between masculinity and vulnerability. He has also done work based on gay male erotica.
His work may be found in the major public collections such as Hammer Museum, Los Angeles; Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Los Angeles; San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, San Francisco; The Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington; The Guggenheim Museum, New York; The Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, among others. Sonsini has had numerous solo exhibitions in The United States, inclu
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One of the foremost contemporary portrait painters working today, John Sonsini creates expressive and politically charged portraits of Los Angeles day workers and intimate portraits of his partner, Gabriel Barajas. Known for his dexterous use of oil paint, Sonsini paints directly from life capturing his sitter’s physical and psychological presence. Sonsini has painted over two hundred portraits of Barajas, who was his sole subject for nearly six years dating back to 1995. During the pandemic, Sonsini began to paint Barajas again both in response to the new constraints of having sitters at the studio and in the interest of returning to a familiar subject. Painted with the immediacy of portrait photography and the tactility of paint typically associated with painterly abstraction, these works evoke a shared experience of looking repeatedly at the same subject. Sonsini focuses on the color of Barajas’s shirt, the growth of facial hair, the angle of light, or the color of the backgrou
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John Sonsini
American artist (born 1950)
John Sonsini (born 1950) is an artist based in Los Angeles who paints primarily with oils.[1] His best known work is portraits of Latino day laborers,[2][3] where Sonsini offered his subjects their usual wage in exchange for sitting for the paintings.[4][5] He has also made work based on gay male erotica.[6]
Early life and education
[edit]Sonsini was born in Rome, New York to an Italian-American family. He moved to Los Angeles with his family as a child, where he grew up in North Hollywood in the San Fernando Valley. He attended California State University, Northridge where he graduated with a degree in art in 1974.[3]
Career
[edit]Sonsini has mounted successful exhibitions at a variety of art galleries and other venues, from the mid 1980s to the 2020s. He is known for his deep exploration of male subjects in his paintings, and his subjects include gay and non