Stephen Tanis,  Denouement
2000

Stephen Tanis: Paintings 1967-2008 will be on view at the University Gallery of the University of Delaware from January 13 - March 8, 2009. The exhibition offers the first retrospective of the works of the contemporary realist painter Stephen Tanis. Thirty four paintings, including larger figural subjects, self-portraits and still-lives will be on view. The works have been loaned from fourteen private and institutional collections.

A self-portrait of the artist at 22 years of age offers the point of departure. From here, the exhibition follows the trajectory of the artist's exploration in still-life paintings of the late 1970s and 1980s. By the late 1980s, Tanis turned toward more complex compositions, often pitting a copy or meditation on an old master painting against a contemporary representation of figures or still-life subjects. This series culminates with Judgment (1994, 60 x 84 inches) in which two contemporary nude models are set against a background copy of almost twenty nudes depicted in the lower portion of Rubens' Last Judgment (Munich). Alongside these, we see new experimentation in still-life paintings, from the almost baroque grandeur of Basket of Apples (1994) . Tanis's investigation of the tradition of painted narrative continues with large figural compositions of 2000 - 2004 such as Denouement (2000). Most recently, his focus has returned to examination of the everyday in small still-life paintings.