Chuck Close

Chuck Close, born Charles Thomas Close in 1940, was an American painter, visual artist, and photographer renowned for his monumental photorealist and abstract portraits. His early life was marked by challenges, including a neuromuscular condition, nephritis, and undiagnosed dyslexia. Close found solace and direction in art, famously recalling his outrage and subsequent inspiration upon seeing a Jackson Pollock drip painting at age 14. After earning his B.A. from the Universi…