Marc Dennis is an American artist known for his hyper-realistic paintings that celebrate the subversive potential of art history, beauty and humor. His paintings provide us with fresh observations on the relationship of contemporary audiences to historical painting. Interested in transformative possibilities, Dennis merges various movements throughout the western art historical canon with modern tropes in order to create fresh paintings rich with irony, hype, and narrative where elements of art history intersect with pop culture. By co-opting celebrated paintings of centuries past, Dennis' works find new meaning in the hallowed lineage of Old Master painting to explore contemporary questions of social interaction, artistic ownership, pictorial representation, and the consumption of images.

Born in Danvers, Massachusetts in 1972, Dennis was one of five sons and grew up in and around Boston, Puerto Rico, New York and New Jersey. His father was born and raised in Havana, Cuba in an orthodox Jewish family (often referred to as a "Jewban"), and immigrated to Dorchester, Massachusetts when he was 16. His mother was born and raised in the tough neighborhood of Roxbury, Massachusetts in a reformed liberal Jewish family. Marc received his B.F.A. from Tyler School of Art at Temple University in Philadelphia, PA and his M.F.A. from The University of Texas at Austin. He was the first studio art major in UT Austin history to receive a Presidential Full Tuition Scholarship.

His works have been included in numerous group and solo exhibitions in New York, Palm Beach, London, Los Angeles, Aspen, Dallas, Chicago, Miami, and Seattle among others. His paintings are in numerous prominent private and public collections, including those of John and Amy Phelan, Glenn and Amanda Fuhrman, Beth DeWoody, Bill and Maria Bell, Larry Gagosian, David and Jennifer Stockman, Carl and Donna Hessel, Larry and Marilyn Fields, Courtney and Karen Lord, Nancy Rogers, Sean and Tammy McCarthy; The Norton Museum of Art, Palm Beach, FL; The JP Morgan Chase Art Collection, New York; The Neuberger Berman Collection, New York; The UBS Corporate Art Collection, Zurich, Switzerland; The Blanton Museum of Art, University of Texas at Austin; The Springfield Museum of Art, Ohio, The MIN Art Museum, Guadalajara, Mexico: and the Iris & B. Gerald Cantor Center for Visual Arts at Stanford University, Palo Alto, California among others. He lives and works in Brooklyn.

Marc Dennis

ReLated Works