PARALLEL LIVES

Imagine a painter whose work rivals the physical impact of Easter Island’s Stone Monoliths, while sharing artistic DNA with Francis Bacon and Lucian Freud.

You end up with Alexander Van Armstrong and almost no one else.

This School of London expressionist is best known for his giant portrait heads of 20th century icons like Winston Churchill, Mick Jagger, Joe Louis, Mike Tyson, Muhammad Ali, and mythological figures like Agamemnon.

These incendiary works are characterized by powerful paint handling, tempered by sophisticated use of chiaroscuro and sfumato. They have nothing in common with Warhol’s portraits of celebrities, nor Chuck Close’s cautious photo realism.

Van Armstrong’s generally sympathetic treatment of subject matter reflects his allegiance to Old Masters like Masaccio and El Greco.

Alexander Van Armstrong is an exact contemporary of Damien Hirst. Each helped to put London’s famous East End art colony on the map.

Both have a history with Charles Saatchi.

Whereas Hirst would embrace the advertising mogul’s patronage, Van Armstrong declined Saatchi’s offer to buy the contents of his last London show.

The artist already had a circle of wealthy patrons privately funding his work, and was not eager to be associated with Saatchi’s Young British Artists.

Arriving in New York in the early 2000s, Van Armstrong hit the ground running. Music mogul, Chris Blackwell gave him the use of a magnificent studio overlooking The Hudson. Film director Spike Lee was one of many celebrity visitors.

When Spike Lee commissioned Van Armstrong to do a giant portrait head of JOE LOUIS for his 2004 movie, SHE HATE ME, it kickstarted an ongoing 20 year artistic collaboration. The film director would also commission giant portrait heads of Jack Johnson and Muhammad Ali.

Fast forward to the present, JOE LOUIS 2 again features in a Spike Lee movie - his latest, a remake of a 1960s Akira Kurosawa crime drama masterpiece, starring Denzel Washington.

At 24 feet wide and 8 feet tall, The King Of Pain is one of the most extreme painting’s of our time. This is the painting that the artist declined to sell to Charles Saatchi.

The King of Pain reprises Francis Bacon’s adoption of the triptych format as a formal device, while preserving much of the poignancy of Bacon’s portraiture, but here on an astonishing scale - 100 times life size.

JOE LOUIS 2 wowed visitors to The Brooklyn Museum’s recent exhibition of Spike Lee’s art collection. The Guardian singled it out as one of the highlights of the exhibition.

What a lot of people don’t know is that Joe Louis 2 is merely the tip of the iceberg.

The artist has produced upwards of 30 such portraits!

We believe that an expertly curated selection of some of these would wow a broad cross section of America’s art museum visiting public.

Here we have magnificent all out painting coupled to rich historical content. This work is not about celebrity. These are magisterial portraits of stupendous individuals, many of whom impacted the political and cultural evolution of 20th century America.

To conclude, we believe that this would make for a great traveling show during 2026, a year in which America will want to reflect upon its history.

Sebastian Ferretti 

University of Chicago 

February 2026