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Chuck Close is known for his oversized portraits - he often painted himself.
Photo: JOE RAEDLE / AFP
According to consistent US media reports, Chuck Close died after a long illness of heart failure in a hospital in Oceanside, New York.
He was 81 years old.
Close was one of the most important contemporary artists in the USA.
He was particularly known for his huge portraits, for which he transferred individual photos, which were painted in individual parts, in a grid-like grid onto the canvas.
The oversized faces are clearly visible from a distance, but at close range they blur into a pattern of geometric shapes: pixels.
His works include portraits of celebrities such as President Bill Clinton and the composer Philip Glass, but also pictures of family members and numerous self-portraits.
In 1973 his works were shown, among other things, as a solo exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art in New York.
Close was twice a participant in the Documenta in Kassel (1972 and 1977).
Recently, however, the painter was also controversial. In 2017, two women accused him of sexual harassment. He made suggestive comments to them. Close apologized: "If I've ever made someone embarrassed or uncomfortable, I'm really sorry, that was not my intention," he told the New York Times. However, his career has not really recovered since then. In 2015, Klose was also diagnosed with a rare dementia.
Charles Thomas Close was born in Monroe, Washington, USA in 1940.
His father was a craftsman and died when the boy was eleven years old.
The mother had to give piano lessons to support the family.
As a child, his parents recognized his talent and sent him to an art school.
In the early 1960s he came to the Yale Summer Academy on the American east coast through a national competition.
He later studied at the art and architecture faculty of the elite university.
After a year of study in Vienna, he settled in New York.
Since 1988 Close has been in a wheelchair after a spinal hemorrhage.
With the help of therapy, however, he began to move his arms.
He could paint with brushes strapped to his hand.
Close leaves two grown daughters to his first wife, Leslie Rose.
He later married the artist Sienna Shields, but the couple separated after a short time.
In recent years he has spent a lot of time in his studio in New York's artist district Soho, on his estate in Long Island or in Miami Beach.
ime / AP / dpa