Richard Kurtz (b. 1955 in Newark, NJ) is a self-taught painter and mixed media artist whose work is featured in the private collections of Sophie Calle, Lester Marks, Audrey Heckler, and Monty Blanchard. Kurtz’s work is housed in institutions like the de Young Museum, The Museum of Everything in London, and The University of Miami Rare Book Collection. He currently lives in Los Angeles.

Kurtz paints prize fighters, superheroes, seductresses, and other-worldly beings, archetypal characters that build his visual world and help him explore themes of power and power dynamics. Many of the heroes in his stories are survivors of a brutal and unforgiving culture of hierarchy, violence, and economic inequality. Kurtz paints these figures obsessively and in the repetitive action, patterns emerge. The resulting lines and forms can be seen as essential mark-making. This repetition is one of the defining components of his work, a compulsive act and meditation.

Kurtz’s relationship to storytelling and text is notable and the combined use of image and text appears throughout his work. Kurtz employs methods like the “cut-up technique”, collage, and “blackout poetry” which story the artworks non-linearly, like pages ripped from a book. He paints in vintage Golden Books and dictionaries, layering his characters and text on top of the original illustrations. For the artist, this type of painting is more than changing the story; it’s an alchemical attempt to shift reality and shift power structures. Including text as a part of his story- telling also acts as a doorway for the viewer to enter the piece beyond the visuals - it invites people to explore their inner worlds and create portals to new realities, dimensions, and possibilities.