Kanovitz (1929-2009) was a pioneering artist in the Photorealist and Hyperrealist movements of the 1960s and 1970s. Initially attracted to downtown New York avant-garde scene, and as an assistant to Franz Kline (1910-1962), he exhibited successfully with the Abstract Expressionists at the fabled Tenth Street galleries, the Tanager and Hansa, and in the Stable Gallery annuals, where he had his first one-man show in 1962. The 1963 death of his father was pivotal in his artistic career, and thereafter he began using photographs as source material, either appropriated from the media or taken himself. In 1972, the Americans Chuck Close, Richard Estes and Kanovitz were chosen to join Europeans Gerhard Richter, Sigmar Polke, Malcolm Morley and Franz Gertsch, in the groundbreaking international art exposition "documenta V," in Kassel, Germany, as the pre-eminent exponents of this new photo-based painting which came to be known as Photorealism.
