Biography
Harding Meyer was born in Porto Alegre, Brazil, in 1964, and lives and works in Germany. He graduated in 1993 and won the Helmut Stober prize in 1999.
Meyer's artistic practice, common to many contemporary painters, is characterized by the attempt to capture the faces and expressions of anonymous humanity, drawing from the vast reservoir of images that come from television, newspapers, cinema, and the internet. An indistinct crowd, without names or surnames, populates his large-format paintings. These are always and only male and female faces, mostly young and attractive, but also including elderly people and children of different ages, sexes, and skin colors. Meyer observes, selects, internalizes, and translates them onto his canvases, amplifying especially the captivating power of their gazes. The artist's intention is to present them devoid of any stereotypical imagery, encouraging the viewer to approach them without prejudice, focusing solely on their expressiveness.
To create this sense of image neutrality, his portraits are often accompanied by a monochrome and uniform background, excluding the surrounding environment and forcing the observer to concentrate solely on the facial features. Meyer prefers and utilizes the horizontal format, as opposed to the vertical one typical of traditional portraiture. This format compresses the face onto the canvas as if it were a still image, to "give a sense of the unfinished and create anticipation, as if the scene painted in the picture should continue in the next one" (Licia Spagnesi, 2006).
His great ability to create blurred atmospheres through a rarefied use of color (applied with broad brushstrokes overlaid with repeated spatula interventions) and to reinterpret the models in the transition from photographic immediacy to the final result on the canvas, means that his portraits translate into something unfinished: "Every face for me is an enigma (…), but I do not want to solve or reveal this enigma. I prefer to leave it intact and deliver it to the viewer" (H. Meyer).
