Ian Hornak

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Ian Hornak (b. January 9, 1944, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania - d. December 9, 2002, Southampton, New York) was an American painter and draughtsman.

[edit] Biography

Born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania to Frank and Rose Hornak where his mother owned a candy store and his father worked welding in the shipyards, Ian Hornak moved along with his parents and younger Brother and Sister, Michael and Rosemary to a farm in Mount Clemens, Michigan at the age of 8. By age 9 Hornak received a set of oil paints and a book of important Renaissance paintings from his Mother as a gift and immediately began copying the works of Michelangelo Buonarroti, Leonardo da Vinci and Raphael Sanzio. The artist remarked in an interview with the 57th Street Review in 1976, "I picked up my technique as a child through my interest in art and copying paintings I liked. I especially loved Renaissance painting, because it had clarity and simplification of form and great organization." Upon graduating from high school in New Haven, Michigan Hornak relocated to Detroit and attended the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor and latter received his BFA and MFA at Wayne State University where for a short time he was to become a professor.

Ian Hornak produced photorealist artwork with surreal overtones in the midst of the pop art movement. He was introduced into the New York art scene in 1967 by Pop Artist, Lowell Blair Nesbitt, whom Hornak lived and worked with until 1968. By 1971 he maintained his primary residence and studio in East Hampton, NY and a secondary penthouse studio at 116 East 73rd Street near the corner of Park Avenue. While living in East Hampton Hornak came to work with and befriend renown art world figures, Robert Motherwell, Willem de Kooning, Robert Indiana, Claes Oldenburg and Fairfield Porter.

In 1969 Hornak was showing in New York in group exhibitions at Eleanor Ward’s Stable Gallery and by 1970 upon the suggestion of Jackson Pollock and Lee Krasner's Nephew, Jason McCoy (assistant director of the Tibor de Nagy Gallery), he had entered into an exclusive contract with the Tibor de Nagy Gallery on West 57th Street (Manhattan), a relationship that would produce the artists first New York Solo exhibition in 1971. Ian Hornak remained with the Tibor de Nagy Gallery until 1977 and in 1978 chose the Fischbach Gallery of West 57th Street (Manhattan) in New York to be his primary gallery, a partnership that would last until 1984. In 1986 he entered into an exclusive contract with the Katharina Rich Perlow Gallery of SoHo and latter East 57th Street (Manhattan) where he was to remain until his death in 2002.

The artists early works were pen & ink drawings and acrylic paintings of floating figures both clothed and nude, in addition to an erotic art series. In 1970 Hornak would begin to produce primarily traditional landscapes in addition to conceptual multiple exposure landscapes in the medium of acrylic, pen & ink and or pencil many of which the subject matter was focused in or around the artist's residence and studio in East Hampton, New York. John Gruen of Arts Magazine in 1975 remarked of the landscape works "Ian Hornak's paintings are frankly dangerous. There is about them the unnerving suggestion of the melodramatic, the lushly romantic." From 1985 until 2002 he produced Dutch & Flemish-inspired botanical and still life paintings with 4-6 inch painted frames where the artist would extend the imagery of the primary painting onto the frame itself. Author and Poet Gerrit Henry said of these works in Art in America Magazine in 1994 "Hornak's is a rather self-explanatory if not wholly tautological postmodernism. Perhaps, though, his excesses ring true for the approaching millennium: this is "end-time" painting that exercises its romantic license to the fullest in its presentation of multiple styles of the last fin de siecle - naturalist, symbolist, allegorical, apocalyptic." Also throughout his career he produced a large number of figurative paintings and drawings which were generally portraits of family, friends and fellow artists, many of them affiliated with the New York School including Tibor de Nagy, Leonard Bernstein and Virgil Thomson. Throughout his career Ian Hornak's instruments of choice were the brush, pencil and pen; never did he resort to the creation of mixed media works or employ the use such devices as the airbrush. The artist would often cite the Hudson River School Artists as major influences, especially Martin Johnson Heade and Frederic Edwin Church in addition to Nineteenth-Century German Romantic Artist, Caspar David Friedrich. Ian Hornak would suffer an aortic aneurysm in 2002 while painting in his studio in East Hampton, New York. Though Hornak was immediately rushed to the Southampton Hospital in New York and surgery was performed to repair the aorta, he died two weeks latter as a result of complications from the surgery. He was 58 years old.

In 2007 Ian Hornak's personal papers and effects were inducted into the Smithsonian Institution's Archives of American Art.

[edit] Selected statements by art critic's and historians

• “Not since the Hudson River School glorified the grandiose panorama of the natural world in meticulous detail has an American artist embraced landscape painting with the artistic totality of Ian Hornak.” - Marcia Corbino, “Hornak Exhibit: Landscapes At Their Best,” Sarasota Herald Tribune, March 7, 1980.

• “He [Ian Hornak] is right at the top of the list of romantically descriptive painters today.” - John Canaday, New York Times, January 12, 1974

• “Given his creative guidelines, Hornak has admirably succeeded in producing an imagery at once visionary and hauntingly intimate. It is personal painting that colors memory, and stays fixed in the mind.” - John Gruen, “Ian Hornak’s Personal Painting,” Arts Magazine, February 1976

• “Odds are 10,000 to one against a young artist surviving in New York on painting alone. But former Detroiter Ian Hornak has been doing so… More then surviving, this painter who just turned 30 has been living comfortably in a studio apartment on 73rd Street and in a weekend home on Long Island. Collectors wait in line for Hornak’s landscape paintings since his third one man show sold out at New York’s Tibor de Nagy Gallery.” - Joy Hakanson, “He’s one in 10,000,” Detroit News, June 2, 1974

• “The exotic landscapes he began to paint were evocations of a world partly inside the mind but also with a very real existence outside related to color photography and modern industrial life. I was deeply interested in the implications of these paintings.” - Frederick J. Cummings, Director [former], Detroit Institute of Arts, May 1974 [circulated catalogue, “Ian Hornak: New Paintings and Drawings]

• “Successive viewings of Hornak’s paintings make one sense that the artist takes great risks and that the risks are often successful… Without risks there is neither art nor achievement. Hornak’s recent paintings are both.” -John L. Hochmann, Arts Magazine, February 1978

[edit] Selected quotes:

• "My idea of a perfect surrealist painting is one in which every detail is perfectly realistic, yet filled with a surrealistic, dreamlike mood. And the viewer himself can't understand why that mood exists, because there are no dripping watches or grotesque shapes as reference points. That is what I'm after: that mood which is apart from everyday life, the type of mood that one experiences at very special moments." -Ian Hornak, The 57th Street Review, January 1976

• "While I know that the beautiful, the spiritual and the sublime are today suspect I have begun to stop resisting the constant urge to deny that beauty has a valid right to exist in contemporary art." -Ian Hornak, Cover Magazine 1994

[edit] Selected solo exhibitions:

• Tibor de Nagy Gallery 57th Street (Manhattan), New York, New York: 1971
• Jacobs Ladder Gallery, Washington D.C.: 1971
• Jacobs Ladder Gallery, Washington D.C.:1973
• Tibor de Nagy Gallery 57th Street (Manhattan), New York, New York: 1973
• Gertrude Kasle Gallery, Detroit, MI: 1974
• Tower Gallery, Southampton, New York: 1974
• Tibor de Nagy Gallery 57th Street (Manhattan), New York, New York: 1975
• Watson-de Nagy Gallery, Houston, TX: 1975
• Sneed Gallery, Burpee Art Museum of Rockford, IL: 1976
• Tibor de Nagy Gallery 57th Street (Manhattan), New York, New York: 1977
• A.J. Wood Gallery, Philadelphia, PA: 1979
• John Pence Gallery, San Francisco, CA: 1980
• Fischbach Gallery 57th Street (Manhattan), New York, New York: 1977
• Fischbach Gallery 57th Street (Manhattan), New York, New York: 1979
• Fischbach Gallery 57th Street (Manhattan), New York, New York: 1981
• Marie Selby Botanical Gardens and Museum of Botany and Art, Sarasota, FL: 1981
• Fischbach Gallery 57th Street (Manhattan), New York, New York: 1983
• The Gallery of Western Carolina University, Cullowhee, NC: 1984, (Retrospective of portraits and landscapes on paper)
• Armstrong Gallery 57th Street (Manhattan), New York, New York: 1985
• Benton Gallery, Southampton, New York: 1988
• Katherina Rich Perlow Gallery SoHo, New York, New York: 1988
• Katherina Rich Perlow Gallery SoHo, New York, New York: 1990
• Katherina Rich Perlow Gallery SoHo, New York, New York: 1992
• Katherina Rich Perlow Gallery SoHo, New York, New York: 1994
• Katherina Rich Perlow Gallery SoHo, New York, New York: 1996
• Katherina Rich Perlow Gallery, Fuller Building, East 57th Street (Manhattan), New York, New York: 1998
• Katherina Rich Perlow Gallery, Fuller Building, East 57th Street (Manhattan), New York, New York: 2000
• Katherina Rich Perlow Gallery, Fuller Building, East 57th Street (Manhattan), New York, New York: 2002

Artist: Ian Hornak; Title: Marcia Sewing; Size: 48 x 72 Inches; Medium: Acrylic/Canvas; Location: Private Collection..

[edit] Selected bibliography:

• Stephanie Cash, David Ebony, "Ian Hornak," Art in America, Feb. 2003
• "Ian Hornak," Washington Post, Jan. 1. 2003
• "Ian Hornak," Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, Dec. 31, 2002
• "Ian Hornak," Amarillo Globe News, Dec. 31, 2002
• Ken Johnson, "Ian Hornak, 58, Whose Paintings Were Known for Hyper-Real Look," New York Times, Dec. 30, 2002
• "Ian Hornak, 58; Painter Was Known for Photo- Realism Style," Los Angeles Times, Dec. 20, 2002
• Morgan McGivern, "Ian Hornak, East Hampton Painter," East Hampton Star, Dec. 19, 2002
• Phyllis Braff, "The Artistry of Getting Into Costume," New York Times, Nov 12, 2000
• Gerrit Henry, “Ian Hornak: Reverence and Reverie,” November 1999 (circulated catalogue)
• Phyllis Braff, "Moods of the Land and Its Other Inhabitants," New York Times, July 25, 1999
• Phyllis Braff, "What the Material Contributes to the Work," New York Times, April 18, 1999
• Phyllis Braff, "A 20th-Century Master, and Signs of the Season," New York Times, Feb 7, 1999
• Patsy Southgate, "Ian Hornak: Creating an Art Apart," East Hampton Star, November 11th 1997
• Grace Glueck, "City Sophistication Spends The Summer on Long Island," New York Times, July 12, 1996
• Helen A. Harrison, "Gardening Themes, Diverse Pleasures," New York Times, June 23, 1996
• Readers Digest [back cover image & feature article], July 1994
• Gerrit Henry, Art in America, July 1994
• Leslie Ava Shaw, “The Sanity of Absolute Beauty“, Cover Magazine, Feb. 1994
• “Drawing on Friendship, Portraits of Painters and Poets,” The New Yorker, Jan. 31, 1994
• Hilton Kramer, “De Nagy, Secret Banker Charmed Bohemians,” New York Observer, Jan. 17, 1994
• Linda Southwood, “Love in a Pencil Line,” The Westside Resident, Jan., 1994
• Rose Slivka, East Hampton Star, Dec. 2, 1993
• Phylis Braff, New York Times, Dec. 13, 1992
• Robert Long, “Four Painters and a Sculptor at the Benton,” Southampton Press, Aug. 11, 1988
• Joan Altabe, “Modern Artist Draws Inspiration from Old Masters,” Sarasota Herald Tribune, May 22, 1988
• Alvin Martin, American Realism- 20th Century Drawings and Water Colors: San Francisco Museum of Modern Art in

Assoc. with Harry Abrams, Inc., Washington D.C., 1983

• David L. Shirey, "Glimpses of Whats Current," New York Times, June 20, 1982
• Helen A. Harrison, The New York Times, June 11, 1982
• Peter Schjeldahl, "33 Artists Offer 33 Views of Realism," New York Times, April 13, 1980
• Marcia Corbino, “Hornak Exhibit: Landscapes At Their Best,” Sarasota Herald Tribune, March 7, 1980
• Gerrit Henry, Art in America, Feb., 1980
• Victoria Donohoo, The Philadelphia Inquirer, June 3, 1979
• David L. Shirey "Guild Hall Displays Landscape's Lure," New York Times, Jan 14, 1979
• John T. Elton, “Romanticisim in Painting,” Humphrey Milford/Oxford University Press, New York, 1978
• Helen Harris, “The New Realists,” Town & Country (magazine), Oct. 1978
• Joy Hakanson Colby, “Painting in the Big Apple,” Sunday News Magazine, Detroit News, Sept. 18, 1978
• David L. Shirey, "More Real Than Real," New York Times, Aug 6, 1978
• "Long Island This Week," New York Times, July 23, 1978
• John Hochmann, "Wordsworth in the Tropics and Hornak's Painting," Arts Magazine, Feb. 1978
• Anne Sargent Wooster, Art News, Jan. 1978
• Vivien Raynor, "Representation Is Alive in SoHo," New York Times, Dec. 30, 1977
• Ann Barry, "Arts and Leisure Guide", New York Times, Oct. 30, 1977
• Ann Barry, "Arts and Leisure Guide," New York Times, Oct. 23, 1977
• Julian Weissman, Art News, Mar. 1976
• John Gruen, “Ian Hornak’s Personal Painting“, Arts Magazine, Feb. 1976
• "Arts and Leisure Guide," New York Times, Jan. 4, 1976
• Norman Lombino, “Interview“, The 57th Street Review, Jan. 1976
• John Gruen, The Soho News, Jan. 1975
• "Arts and Leisure Guide", New York Times, Jan. 19, 1975
• "Arts and Leisure Guide," New York Times, Jan. 12, 1975
• Gregory Battcock, “Super Realism: A Critical Analogy,” E.P. Dutton and Co. (New York, 1975)
• Joy Hakanson, “He’s one in 10,000“, Detroit News, June 2, 1974
• Jack Mitchell, “The Artist as a Subject“, Arts Magazine, Jan. 1974
• John Canaday, The New York Times, Jan. 12, 1974
• John Scarborough, Houston Chronicle, May 27, 1974
• Frederick Cummings, [circulated catalogue] “Ian Hornak: New Paintings and Drawings," May 1974
• Judith Van Baron, Arts Magazine, March 1974
• "What's New in Art; In the Galleries," New York Times, Dec. 30, 1973
• "Art Shows," Washington Post, June 1, 1973
• Paul Ricahrd, "Major Influence, Minor Artist," Washington Post, May 24, 1973
• "Stage," Washington Post, May 18, 1973
• Gregory Battock, Art and Artists, Feb. 1973
• Painting and Sculpture Today, The Contemporary Arts Society and Indianapolis Museum of Art (Indianapolis, 1972)
• “A Tree is a Tree, Hornak Works His Canvas in Romantic Realsim,” The Herald-Time Off, Oct. 24, 1971
• Joy Hakanson, The Detroit News, Oct. 10, 1971
• Frank Getlein, The Evening Star, Washington D.C., May 12, 1971
• Sarah Booth Conroy, "Realism Back In Art," Washington Post, May 17, 1971
• David Bourdon, The Village Voice, Jan. 20, 1970
• Who's Who in American Art
• Who’s Who in the East

[edit] Ian Hornak's artworks are owned by the following public collections:

• Albrecht-Kemper Museum of Art, Saint Joseph, Missouri
• Allen Memorial Art Museum, Oberlin, Ohio [1]
• Austin Museum of Art, Austin, Texas [2]
• Canton Museum of Art, Canton, Ohio [3]
• Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington D.C. [4] [5]
• Dartmouth College: Hood Museum of Art, Hanover, New Hampshire [6]
• Galleria Internazionale, Milan, Italy
• Guild Hall, East Hampton, New York [7] [8]
• Karmanos Cancer Institute: Wayne State University, Detroit, Michigan
• Kinsey Institute for Research in Sex, Gender and Reproduction, Bloomington, Indiana
• Ringling College of Art and Design, Sarasota, Florida
• Rockford Art Museum, Rockford, Illinois [9]
• Rutgers University: Jane Voorhees Zimmerli Art Museum, New Brunswick, New Jersey
• Smithsonian Institution: Archives of American Art, Washington D.C.[10]
• University of Maryland: Art Gallery University of Maryland, College Park, Maryland
• Vassar College: Frances Lehman Loeb Art Center, Poughkeepsie, New York
• Washington County Museum of Fine Arts, Hagerstown, Maryland [11]

[edit] External links

• Official Website of the Estate of Ian Hornak
• The Athenaeum: 13 paintings by Ian Hornak
• Hood Museum: Dartmouth College, New Hampshire: 10 artworks by Ian Hornak
• Canton Museum of Art, Ohio: 1 Ian Hornak Painting

[edit] Sources

• [12]New York Times; "Ian Hornak, 58, Whose Paintings Were Known for Hyper-Real Look;"

December 30, 2002; written by KEN JOHNSON (NYT); The Arts/Cultural Desk Late Edition - Final, Sect. A, p. 15.

• [13]Art In America, Ian Hornak at Katharina Rich Perlow - New York, New York, Author Gerrit Henry, July 1994

• [14] East Hampton Star, Creating An Art Apart: Ian Hornak, Author Patsy Southgate, November 20th 1997

• [15]Smithsonian Institution: Archives of American Art: Ian Hornak papers, 1955-1991

• [16] Smithsonian Institution: Archives of American Art (images of Hornak catalogue)

• [17] Smithsonian Institution: Archives of American Art (images of Ian Hornak's Passport)

• [18] Wayne State University: Department of Art & Art History Alumni Profiles (Ian Hornak 1944-2002)

• [19] Art in America, Feb 2003, Ian Hornak Obituary

• [20] Ian Hornak, 58; Painter Was Known for Photo- Realism Style, Los Angeles Times, December 20, 2002

• [21] Ian Hornak (page 10), Expressions Magazine, Wayne State University 2008

• [22] Getty Center Los Angeles: Union List of Names- Brief biographical information regarding Ian Hornak