Closet Formalism

John Sabraw painted Closet Formalism with such painstaking precision that viewers often believe the rich purple fabric is real, as are the foreshortened clear plastic push pins holding the material to a gold board! This would delight Sabraw, who has honored the Old Master tradition of trompe-l'œil or trick of the eye, designed to simulate the appearance of a three-dimensional object.

Closet Formalism represents the first of two distinct phases in Sabraw’s artistic output. He achieved this tour de force of painting by a laborious technique of multiple priming, sanding, and varnishing, all to realize a glass-smooth surface. The invisible brushstrokes leave little trace of the artist’s hand, thus intensifying the optical illusion.

Both the title of the work, Closet Formalism, and the assemblage of unrelated objects (purple fabric, push pins, and glass) lend a surreal and enigmatic quality to the work. As a child, Sabraw was an intense observer, and this shines through in his perspicacious depiction of reality mixed with fantasy.

Initially he studied illustration at the Pratt Institute, Brooklyn, in 1988. While in New York, Sabraw designed ladies’ handbags and authored a children’s book, I wouldn’t be scared (1989). He matriculated in 1994 with the highest of honors at the University of Kansas with a Bachelor of Arts. In 1997, he received a Master of Arts at Northwestern University in Illinois, where he studied under painting Professor James Valerio, whose work Night Fires is also in the collection of the Union League Club of Chicago, and from whom Sabraw clearly learned the photo-realistic, meticulous technique of painted expression. Sabraw is currently the Chair of the Department of Painting and Drawing at Ohio University, School of Fine Art in Athens Ohio. The Club owns a more recent work of his, Chroma S4 Chimaera, a complete departure aesthetically from this earlier work, Closet Formalism.

Sally Metzler, Ph.D., Director of the Art Collection

For more on this work, see: Union League Club of Chicago Art Collection, M. Richter; W. Greenhouse, Union League Club of Chicago, Chicago, 2003, p. 218