Jack Beal, Optimistic New Realist Painter, Dies at 82 – a leading member of a young group of artist from the 1960s and 70s who rejected the Abstract Expressionist movement in favor of Realism.
Beal was known for his minutely detailed portraits, still lifes, landscapes and narrative works. In 1977 Hilton Kramer wrote that Beal’s murals (created for the Labor Department’s headquarters in D.C.) established him “as the most important Social Realist to have emerged in American painting since the 1930s.”
Jack Beal