Curt Hoppe premiered his Downtown Portraits this week at Howl! Gallery in the East Village and Bernarducci Gallery in Chelsea culminating nine years of work on 24 painstakingly, even painful, painted photorealist portraits in the grand manner and scale (94×70) usually reserved for European aristocracy.  Painful as for a considerable amount of the time he worked his way through an almost crippling bout of arthritis in his loft on the Bowery, his stroll since we first met in the very early ’70s.  Which makes us old friends and it shows.

I’ll write about that some time when my computer isn’t suffering it’s own bout of humidity induced arthritis making this if not painful but exasperating to type, including an accidental interview I’ve recovered from a studio visit Camilla and I made when the work was in progress and some of the family portraits Curt was so kind to make of us, commemorating Ad’s graduation and Camilla’s Loves of Aaron Burr exhibition back in 2013.

Which is one of the first things that comes to mind when I think of Curt.  First, his kindness, then his generosity.  Which are what one looks for in a friend which, as the exhibition attests to, is another thing he’s good at.  I count myself privileged to be included in this compendium of his from our g-g-g-generation.

Congratulations, habibi. – KT