Angel Study by Kurt Wenner
$5,800
Somnus by Kurt Wenner
$5,800

"My paintings invite rediscovery of many artistic traditions, and I enjoy incorporating mythology, allegory, literature, and theater into the compositions."

Kurt Wenner attended Rhode Island School of Design and Art Center College of Design before working for NASA as an advanced scientific space illustrator. In 1982, Wenner left NASA for Italy to pursue his love of classical art.

While based in Rome, Italy, Wenner studied the works of the great masters and drew constantly from classical sculpture. The drawings he made brought him in touch with the language of form in Western figurative art and provided him with the neoclassical training necessary for the style he was pursuing. Through his studies he became particularly interested in the Mannerist period; finding in the monumental scale and sophisticated decoration a direction for his own artistic expression. For several years Wenner traveled extensively in order to experience firsthand most of the major masterpieces and monuments throughout Europe.

During these first years abroad he experimented with traditional paint media such as tempera, fresco, and oil paint. In order to finance his travels and studies he became a madonnaro and created chalk paintings on the streets of Rome. Within several years he won numerous gold medals at European competitions and become officially recognized as a master of this art form. In 1985 his work was the subject of National Geographic’s award-winning documentary Masterpiece in Chalk.

Eventually, Wenner’s knowledge of Renaissance classicism provided a foundation for his own art, as well as material for numerous lectures and workshops given throughout the US.

A firm believer in arts education, Wenner taught more than a hundred thousand students over a 10-year period and received the Kennedy Center Medallion in recognition of his outstanding contribution to arts education. In addition to teaching, he has lectured at corporate events and conducted seminars and workshops for organizations ranging from the National Gallery of Art and the Smithsonian Institution to Disney Studios, Warner Bros. Studios, Toyota, and General Motors.

In 1984, Wenner invented an art form all his own that has come to be known as anamorphic, 3D pavement art, or 3D street art. A form of perspective, known as anamorphism was used by the great European Masters to give the illusion of soaring architecture and floating figures in ceiling frescoes. Inspired by this use of perspective, Wenner invented a new geometry to create compositions that appear to rise from, or fall into the ground.

In traditional anamorphic perspective, painted forms appear correct when viewed from one point in space. Wenner’s geometry corrects the specific distortion caused by viewing his large images at an oblique angle. This type of geometry has come to be known as Wenner’s hyperbolic perspective.

Wenner’s geometry along with the success of the National Geographic documentary inspired many communities to create their own street painting festivals. Wenner worked with the organizers of the first festivals to prepare the surface and materials, as well as train artists. Today there are countless street painting events and festivals in the USA and throughout the world that attract scores of professional and amateur artists, along with children and spectators. Over the past twenty years, hundreds of millions of people worldwide have seen a live street painting event, whether in person or broadcast on television or on the Internet.

When Pope John Paul II arrived in Mantua, Italy, Wenner was commissioned to create an original composition for a 15’ x 75’ street painting based on the Last Judgment. Under Wenner’s direction, thirty of Europe’s best street painters worked 10 days to create the image. On the last day the Pope signed the mural thus officially sanctioning pavement art as an official form of Sacred Art.