Nat Krate: Talent in Bloom

Nat Krate's "Vitruvian Woman." COURTESY PHOTO.

In January, Dabbert Gallery will showcase the paintings of Nat Krate. This prolific painter is a former Ringling College of Art and Design instructor. He had another career before that. If not another identity.

Once upon a time, Krate was a Mad Man. Not a lunatic. A “Mad Man” in the Don Draper sense; he worked in the realm of advertising. Visual artists often do. And American advertising has always returned the compliment.

These days, advertising illustration appropriates graffiti art and cutting-edge digital simulation. But for much of the mid- to late-20th century, America’s Mad Men absorbed the Realist style of what Don Draper might call the “Old Masters”—the painters of the High Renaissance. Broadly speaking, that style holds a mirror up to life.

In the post-W.W. II boom, Realism became the dominant illustration style in American print advertising—to the extent many artists rejected it as commercial art by definition. As if to say, “OK, Mr. Ad Man. You want Realism? You can have it. That style is yours now.”

But Krate didn’t give it away so easily. After he left the world of advertising, Krate defiantly tried to wrestle the true-to-life approach back to the world of fine art. Today, that approach has become respectable again—just another tool in the contemporary painter’s Postmodern toolbox.  It wasn’t, when the painter started, several decades back. Krate’s Realist revolution took guts.

The painter started his quiet revolution with images of the human form. Krate’s Realist figures are realistic indeed—especially his female figures, like his famous “Vitruvian Woman” painting, a feminine spin on Da Vinci’s “Vitruvian Man.” Whether male or female, Krate’s painted people seem to breathe. It’s hard to put your finger on how he does it. The painter’s dual secret is probably a fine sense of anatomy (the structure below the surface) and skin (the surface itself).

Krate has an incredible ability to paint the human body’s fleshy envelope . He captures skin’s translucency, revealing the layers beneath. He applies the same exacting technique to his series of flower paintings—the focus of this exhibit.

Nat Krate's "Kalanchoe XXVII." COURTESY PHOTO

Krate’s luminous flowers reveal the same powers of observation as his studies of the human form. That objectivity sets his botanical paintings apart from, well, garden variety floral imagery. The garden of his art creeps up on the border of Photorealism—but doesn’t quite cross the line.

Krate is not a human camera. He’s a Realist, not a literalist. He gives himself room to play. Krate’s painting style has range. Like the Old Masters that continue to inspire him, he tries not to repeat himself.

 An artist’s reception takes place Friday, January 6, from 6-8:30 p.m.