Smoking Blond, 1990

Allan D'Arcangelo was an American artist and printmaker who was part of the Pop Art movement. Like other Pop artists, he drew his inspiration from the cultural (and, in his case, often literal) landscape. His best known works are acrylic paintings of highway imagery, including iconic roads (such as Route 66), street signs, and road barriers. These pieces in particular demonstrate his "hard edge," or constructivist, style, in which Allan used bold colors and sharp geometrical figures to transform deep perspective fields into stark and simplified two-dimensional images. With this technique he was able to both portray and transcend spatial relationships, allowing the images to be experienced as representative of both direct experience and more general symbolism. Allan D'Arcangelo's work was included in a number of important Pop Art exhibitions, including Mixed Media and Pop Art at the Albright-Knox Museum in 1963. His paintings are in the permanent collections of a number of museums, such as the Tate Britain in London and the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York. (Artist website)