Born in Cheyenne, Wyoming, Matt Straub reveals his deep nostalgia for the American West in his work. He has hitch-hiked across most of the West and hopped a few freight trains. Featured in Straub's painting are the classic Western iconography images of cowboys, cowgirls, guns and horses. Straub's paintings echo the period of transition between Abstract Expressionism and Pop Art and reference Hollywood Westerns as well as the comics and pulps of the 1940s-50s. The paintings' graphic and illustrative narratives combine camp and caricatures inspired by Western pulp writers and illustrators, while varied surfaces resonate with influences from artists such as Willem De Kooning, Andy Warhol, Roy Lichtenstein and Brice Marden.
Ultimately, the work comments on the violent and sentimental mythologies of the American West, an America defined by melancholy sunsets, badlands, gunfights, outlaws and red-blooded heroes. Straub tackles the highs and lows of society with a comic visual vocabulary and a bold, fresh Sixties sensibility. The artist says his 'Pop-Westerns are like graffiti splattered box cars rolling across the plains.'
Matt Straub has lived in Chicago, London, and Berlin. He graduated with a BFA from the University of Illinois in 1979. He currently resides in New York City.
Buy original artworks and limited edition prints by Matt Straub at Opus Fine Art; the home of Contemporary art.
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