Ellen Altfest

Who is Ellen Altfest?

Ellen Altfest is a realist painter based in New York. She paints still lifes and male figures from life in painstaking detail. Her work is noted for its precision and trompe-l'œil accuracy. Influences include Albrecht Dürer's The Large Turf, Jackson Pollock, and Lucian Freud.

She graduated from Cornell University with a BFA in Painting and a BA in English, an MFA in Painting from Yale, and studied at the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture.

Altfest is represented by White Cube in London. In 2007 White Cube held a solo exhibition of her work which included the first extensive series of paintings of men. A monograph was released on the occasion of her exhibition at White Cube. Her work has featured in several prominent exhibitions, including "USA Today", curated from the Saatchi Collection, at the Royal Academy in London and "The Leg" at the Chinati Foundation in Marfa, Texas in 2010.