Chuck Close, born Charles Thomas Close on July 5, 1940, in Monroe, Washington, overcame significant early challenges including undiagnosed dyslexia, prosopagnosia (face blindness), a neuromuscular disorder, and nephritis that sidelined him from school. Art became his refuge; he honed his skills through private lessons and live model drawing. Close studied at Everett Community College before earning a B.A. from the University of Washington in Seattle in 1962. A scholarship took him to Yale Summer School of Music and Art, leading to an M.F.A. from Yale University in 1964, where he studied under director Jack Tworkov and assisted printmaker Gabor Peterdi. A Fulbright grant funded further training at the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna.
Pioneering massive-scale portraits in the photorealist tradition—though Close rejected the label—Close transposed photographs onto enormous canvases using a grid system, treating each square as an abstract unit that coalesced into hyper-detailed faces from afar. After moving to New York in 1967, he produced breakthroughs like *Big Nude* (1967) and *Big Self-Portrait* (1967–68), a 9-by-7-foot black-and-white acrylic acquired by the Walker Art Center. Works such as *Kent* (1970), mimicking dye-transfer printing with layered colors, *Mark* (1978–79), and *Fanny/Fingerpainting* (1985), using fingerprints for texture, showcased his inventive media: airbrush, watercolor, mezzotint, and pulp paper.
A 1988 spinal artery collapse left Close paralyzed from the neck down, yet he adapted by strapping a brush to his wrist and enlarging his grid for assistants to prepare, yielding looser, pixelated abstractions like *Lucas* (1986–87, completed post-event) and later tapestries of figures including Philip Glass and Barack Obama. Married to Leslie Rose (with two daughters) until 2011, he later wed Sienna Shields. Close's legacy endures in over 150 solo shows, the National Medal of Arts (2000), and collections worldwide, reinvigorating portraiture by probing identity, process, and human imperfection amid photography's dominance. He died on August 19, 2021, from heart failure, his staring eyes forever challenging viewers.
