Born in the Czech Republic, Peter Gric emigrated to Austria at the age of 12, and studied at the Academy of Arts in Vienna.
His paintings are representational, but they largely depict imaginary objects or landscapes, that can at times seem architectural, at times organic and at other times, a combination of the two.
Gric paints in acrylic and sometimes oil, and uses computer graphics and 3D software to help visualize and work out perspective and compositional problems before, or even while painting.
His structural imaginings can take curvilinear forms that seem to be obeying some hidden geometry, as if some stone-like material was assembling itself along invisible lines of force.
Other images show the apparent dissolution of structures or material formations, with walls or cliffs dissolving into a gravity defying shower of stone blocks. His paintings sometimes include female forms that are apparently made of stone and either dissolving or gathering themselves together from inorganic elements.
Gric’s website has his paintings arranged by year, so you can browse back through some of his previous explorations of similar and disparate themes.
There is also a shop with prints of images from various times. Gric has also illustrated a number of book covers, largely in the science fiction genre, and you can see some of them in the “Other Projects” section of his site.
There is a gallery for Gric’s paintings on the beinArt Surreal Art Collective, which is where I encountered his work, as well as an interview with the artist. He is also featured in the first volume of the Collective’s Metamorphosis collections (see my post on Metamorphosis, Volume I).
