23 Facts About Ian Hornak

Ian Hornak was an American draughtsman, painter and printmaker.

Ian Hornak was one of the founding artists of the Hyperrealist and Photorealist fine art movements; credited with having been the first Photorealist artist to incorporate the effect of multiple exposure photography into his landscape paintings; and the first contemporary artist to entirely expand the imagery of his primary paintings onto the frames.

Ian Hornak was born on January 9,1944, in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, to Slovakian immigrants, Frank and Rose Hornak.

Ian Hornak transferred his representation to the Katharina Rich Perlow Gallery in 1986 where he had nine critically and financially successful solo exhibitions and remained until his death in 2002.

At age nine, Ian Hornak received a set of oil paints and a book of important Renaissance paintings from his mother as a gift.

Ian Hornak created a large body of prints with Renaissance, and Baroque inspired subject matter, mostly in the medium of etching.

In New York, Ian Hornak was among the first artists to produce Photorealist artwork, along with his counterparts Richard Estes, Chuck Close, Malcom Morley, Lowell Nesbitt, and Howard Kanovitz as a reaction to the then dominant Pop Art movement.

In 1970, Ian Hornak debuted the first landscape paintings of his multiple exposure series.

Ian Hornak is credited as having been the first photorealist artist to incorporate the concept of multiple exposure photography into his paintings.

In 1985, Jimmy Ernst encouraged Ian Hornak to create a new series of paintings, more expressionistic in technique.

From 1986 until his death in 2002 Ian Hornak produced botanical and still life paintings inspired by the Dutch and Flemish masters from The Golden Age.

Ian Hornak said of his own artistic vision in an interview with Cover Magazine in 1994, "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 owned a home and a large studio in East Hampton, New York which he used as his primary residence from 1970 until his death in 2002.

Ian Hornak had a secondary penthouse studio on New York City's Upper East Side near the intersection of East 73rd Street and Park Avenue.

Ian Hornak spent the winters at a home and studio that he owned in Sarasota, Florida which he initially built to be near his friend, Jimmy Ernst who had a home in the region.

Ian Hornak often cited 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, had a younger sister, Rosemary Hornak who was a fine artist, and the sole beneficiary of his estate; and younger brother, Michael Hornak.

Together, Wolf and Ian Hornak lived at their homes in New York City's Upper East Side and at their weekend home in East Hampton, New York, where Ian Hornak continued to live until his own death in 2002.

Later Ian Hornak introduced Wolf to the contemporary art scene in New York City and educated him on the current trends in visual culture.

Together Wolf and Hornak assembled a large collection of artwork and upon Wolf's death in 1976, per Wolf and Hornak's wishes, John G Heimann, Wolf's estate executor, delivered a bequest of 95 artworks to the Hood Museum of Art and the Hopkins Center for the Arts at Wolf's alma mater Dartmouth College.

Ian Hornak had an aortic aneurysm on November 17,2002, while painting in his studio in East Hampton, New York.

On January 21,2011, Ian Hornak was interred in the Columbarium of Piety in the Iris Terrace section of the Great Mausoleum in the Forest Lawn Memorial Park, Glendale, in Los Angeles County, California.

Ian Hornak's artwork was the subject of a solo exhibition, on display during the 2013 Presidential Inauguration at the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System in the Eccles Building in Washington DC under the sponsorship of the Ben Bernanke Administration.