Anthony Cudahy

Anthony Cudahy
Born1989 (age 36–37)
Education
OccupationPainter
SpouseIan Lewandowski
Websiteanthonycudahy.com

Anthony Cudahy (born 1989)[1] is a contemporary American painter whose work addresses queer experience and the relationship between contemporary figurative painting and its historical precedents.[2]

He creates figurative compositions that draw on personal photographs, queer archival imagery, art history, and film stills.[1][3][4][5] His paintings are often rendered with areas of phosphorescent color against denser, muted passages.[6]

Early life and education

Anthony Cudahy was born in 1989[1] and grew up in Fort Myers, Florida.[3] He moved to New York City[3] and earned a Bachelor of Fine Arts from Pratt Institute in 2011.[2] He completed a Master of Fine Arts at Hunter College in 2020.[7]

Career

After graduating from Pratt in 2011, Cudahy worked as a graphic designer for nearly a decade while continuing to paint.[2] In 2013–14, he was an artist-in-residence at the ARTHA Project in the Brooklyn Navy Yard.[8] His first solo exhibition, Heaven Inside, opened at Uprise Art Outpost in 2014.[9] He is represented by GRIMM, Hales Gallery, and Semiose.[10]

Work

Cudahy's paintings pair delicate figural drawing with broad abstract passages.[7] His subjects are often solitary figures or couples in dreamlike, ambiguous settings.[7][11] He repeatedly paints people from his life, including his husband and close friends, in scenes that range from observational portraits to allegorical narratives, open to interpretation.[12][13]

Cudahy works from a personal archive of snapshots, film stills, screenshots, and historical queer photographs.[5][6][13] By repainting these appropriated images, he shifts their original context[4][14] to surface intimate moments[12] and marginalized stories, particularly those tied to queer experience.[2][6] He cites Pieter Bruegel the Elder,[2] Albrecht Dürer,[2] Lucian Freud,[12] Caspar David Friedrich,[14] Chris Ofili,[12] and Jenny Saville[12] as influences.

Cudahy typically works wet-on-wet in long sessions, aiming to complete each painting's first layer in one sitting to preserve its luminosity and energy.[3][2] Cudahy also makes colored pencil drawings.[1]

Critical reception

Cudahy's work has been described as depicting "queer intimacy in the mundane"[13] and blurring "the mundane and the sacred."[15] Artsy called Cudahy "a serious painter who's also an unpredictable storyteller" and "a reliable narrator of the era."[9] Critics have compared his work to that of Peter Doig and Salman Toor;[14] he has also been grouped alongside Janiva Ellis, Genieve Figgis, and Cy Gavin as contemporaries working in a similar figurative mode.[9] L'Express likened Cudahy's precision in drawing and use of color to David Hockney's, and described his éclectisme audacieux (transl. "bold eclecticism") as unmatched among young figurative painters internationally.[16] BOMB described his practice as "painting that thinks through other images," noting how he reinterpreted works by neglected and often unattributed older artists.[2]

Personal life

Cudahy lives and works in Brooklyn with his husband, photographer Ian Lewandowski.[3]

Exhibitions

  • Heaven Inside, Uprise Art Outpost, Chelsea, NY, 2014[17]
  • Recent Work, Artha Project Space, Long Island City, NY, 2015[8]
  • The Fourth Part of the Day, Farewell Books, Austin, TX, 2015
  • EatF_3, Mumbo's Outfit, within Geary Contemporary, New York, NY, 2016[18]
  • NARSOLIPS, Cooler Gallery, Brooklyn, NY, 2016[19]
  • The Gathering, The Java Project, Brooklyn, NY, 2018[20]
  • Night Paintings, 1969 Gallery, New York, NY, 2018[21]
  • Anthony Cudahy: Burn Across the Breeze, 1969 Gallery, New York, NY, 2021[22]
  • Anthony Cudahy, The Moon Sets a Knife, Semiose Gallery, Paris, France, 2021[23]
  • Coral Room, Hales Gallery, New York, NY, 2021[24]
  • Anthony Cudahy, Flames, Semiose Gallery, Paris, France, 2021[25]
  • Double Spar, dual exhibition: Hales Gallery and GRIMM, London, UK, 2023[15][26][27]
  • Conversation, Musée des Beaux-Arts de Dole, France, 2023[2]
  • Fool's Gold, Hales Gallery, New York, NY, 2024[28]
  • Fool's Errand, Grimm Gallery, London, UK, 2024[29] and Grimm Gallery, New York, NY, 2024[5]
  • Spinneret, Ogunquit Museum of American Art, Maine, 2024;[30] traveled to the Green Family Art Foundation, Dallas, Texas[31]

Collections

Cudahy's work is in the permanent collections of several institutions, including:

References

  1. ^ a b c d "Anthony Cudahy". Hales Gallery. Retrieved March 2, 2025.
  2. ^ a b c d e f g h i Moroz, Sarah (August 30, 2023). "Anthony Cudahy: Painting That Thinks Through Other Images". BOMB. Retrieved March 2, 2025.
  3. ^ a b c d e Romack, Coco (March 12, 2024). "An Artist Who Aims to Be as Eclectic as a Tumblr Feed". The New York Times. Retrieved March 2, 2025.
  4. ^ a b Cholakova, Ivana (October 23, 2023). "Anthony Cudahy: 'My Work Feels Like a Living History'". Frieze. Retrieved March 2, 2025.
  5. ^ a b c Pricco, Evan (September 11, 2024). "Anthony Cudahy and a "Fool's Errand"". Juxtapoz. Retrieved March 2, 2025.
  6. ^ a b c Soldi, Rafael (April 8, 2021). "Q&A: Anthony Cudahy". Strange Fire Collective. Retrieved March 2, 2025.
  7. ^ a b c Zinn, Sebastian (June 29, 2021). "The Ethereal Everyday of Anthony Cudahy". Hyperallergic. Retrieved March 2, 2025.
  8. ^ a b "Anthony Cudahy: Recent Work". Artha Project Space. 2015. Retrieved March 3, 2025.
  9. ^ a b c Belknap, John (November 15, 2022). "The Artsy Vanguard 2022: Anthony Cudahy". Artsy. Retrieved March 2, 2025.
  10. ^ "Anthony Cudahy: Double Spar". Grimm. Retrieved March 2, 2025.
  11. ^ Coleman, Jack; Toups, Olivia (April 2021). "Anthony Cudahy". Super!. Retrieved March 2, 2025.
  12. ^ a b c d e Pricco, Evan (2024). "Anthony Cudahy: The Inflections of Somebody". Juxtapoz. Retrieved March 2, 2025.
  13. ^ a b c Arias, Tsabella (December 20, 2024). "How Painter Anthony Cudahy Finds Intimacy in the Mundane". Interview.
  14. ^ a b c Soboleva, Ksenia (April 2, 2020). "The Moon Seemed Lost". The Brooklyn Rail. Retrieved March 2, 2025.
  15. ^ a b Silver, Hannah (October 18, 2023). "The mundane meets the sacred in Anthony Cudahy's richly drawn figures". Wallpaper*. Retrieved March 2, 2025.
  16. ^ Dannery, Letizia (May 20, 2023). "Anthony Cudahy, une "conversation" riche en promesses" [Anthony Cudahy, a "conversation" rich with promise]. L'Express (in French). Retrieved February 12, 2026.
  17. ^ "Heaven Inside". Uprise Art. March 2014. Retrieved March 3, 2025.
  18. ^ "Anthony Cudahy: EatF_3" (PDF). Artforum. April 28 – May 28, 2016. Retrieved March 3, 2025.
  19. ^ "NARSOLIPS". Cooler Gallery. November 2016. Retrieved March 3, 2025.
  20. ^ "The Gathering". The Java Project. 2018. Retrieved March 3, 2025.
  21. ^ "Anthony Cudahy: Night Paintings". 1969 Gallery. September 13 – October 21, 2018. Retrieved March 3, 2025.
  22. ^ "Anthony Cudahy: Burn Across the Breeze". 1969 Gallery. January 10 – February 21, 2021. Retrieved March 3, 2025.
  23. ^ "Anthony Cudahy: The Moon Sets a Knife". Semiose. May 22, 2021. Retrieved March 2, 2025.
  24. ^ "Anthony Cudahy: Coral Room". Hales Gallery. September 10 – October 30, 2021. Archived from the original on September 24, 2021. Retrieved March 2, 2025.
  25. ^ "Anthony Cudahy: Flames". Semiose. May 26, 2020. Retrieved March 2, 2025.
  26. ^ "Anthony Cudahy: Double Spar". Grimm. October 9 – November 11, 2023. Retrieved March 2, 2025.
  27. ^ "Anthony Cudahy: Double Spar". Hales Gallery. October 9 – November 11, 2023. Retrieved March 2, 2025.
  28. ^ "Anthony Cudahy: Fool's Gold". Hales Gallery. September 6, 2024. Retrieved March 3, 2025.
  29. ^ "Anthony Cudahy: Fool's Errand". Grimm. September 6, 2024. Retrieved March 2, 2025.
  30. ^ "Anthony Cudahy: Spinneret". Ogunquit Museum of American Art. April 12 – July 21, 2024. Retrieved March 2, 2025.
  31. ^ "Anthony Cudahy: Spinneret". Green Family Art Foundation. October 5, 2025. Retrieved March 2, 2025.
  32. ^ "Anthony Cudahy". Baltimore Museum of Art. Retrieved March 2, 2025.
  33. ^ "Anthony Cudahy". Cantor Arts Center. Stanford University. Retrieved March 2, 2025.
  34. ^ "Smoke Sun, Ocular Migraine, Torture Wheel". Dallas Museum of Art. Retrieved March 2, 2025.
  35. ^ "Anthony Cudahy". Institute of Contemporary Art, Miami. Retrieved March 2, 2025.
  36. ^ "Fear Painting". Kunstmuseum Den Haag. 31 March 2023. Retrieved March 2, 2025.
  37. ^ "Anthony Cudahy". Les Arts au Mur, Artothèque de Pessac (in French). Retrieved March 2, 2025.
  38. ^ "Anthony Cudahy". Musée d'Art Moderne de Paris (in French). Retrieved March 2, 2025.
  39. ^ "Portrait Collection Highlights". New-York Historical Society. Retrieved March 2, 2025.
  40. ^ "Bad Thoughts". Stedelijk Museum. Retrieved March 2, 2025.

Further reading

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