Artist: Sid Maurer
Title: Natalie Portman (from the Portraits of Luminaries Collection)
Year created: 2011
Medium: Original Mixed Media Artwork on Wood Board
Edition: Original Unique Artwork, Hand-Signed by the Artist
Height (inches): 23-3/4
Width (inches): 18-3/4
Signed by the artist
Signed Area: front
This piece is unframed.
Description of piece:
Sid Maurer’s mastery as a fine artist is evident in his strikingly accurate, personal and intuitive portraits of luminaries.
Imbued with warmth and vibrancy, Maurer’s portraits capture the essence of his subjects, and synthesize Maurer’s artistic vision with his technical and compositional roots in graphic design. Bold, visible paint texturing and layering bring added light, depth and dimensionality to the artwork.
An original mixed media painting on wood board, Maurer’s self-titled Natalie Portman measures 23-3/4” in height x 18-3/4” width.
Portman is luminous in Sid Maurer's portrait, with shimmering details in her dress and elaborate earrings. Portman, whose acting roles include an intergalactic Queen and an astrophysicist who dates Thor, the Asgardian God of Thunder, has been adorned with some of the most elegantly otherworldly costumes in cinematic history.
The artwork is prominently signed by the artist, lower left, in a large vertical signature, in silver.
Natalie Portman is accompanied by its original Certificate of Authenticity from Allan Rich, Sid Maurer’s gallerist and lifelong personal friend. In addition to representing artists with Hollywood ties, Allan Rich was himself a well-known character actor, author and acting coach. The COA includes a photograph of the artwork; a photograph of, and personal statement by, the artist; and is signed and dated by Allan Rich.
NATALIE PORTMAN is an actress, director and producer. Prolific in film since a teenager, she has starred in blockbusters and independent films, for which she has received various accolades, including an Academy Award and two Golden Globe Awards.
Portman began her acting career at age 12 by starring as the young protégée of a hitman in the action drama film Léon: The Professional (1994). While still in high school, she made her Broadway theatre debut in a 1998 production of The Diary of a Young Girl and gained international recognition for starring as Padmé Amidala in Star Wars: Episode I – The Phantom Menace (1999). From 1999 to 2003, Portman attended Harvard University for a bachelor's degree in psychology, while continuing to act in the Star Wars prequel trilogy (2002, 2005) and in The Public Theater's 2001 revival of Anton Chekhov's play The Seagull. In 2004, Portman was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress and won a Golden Globe Award for playing a mysterious stripper in the drama Closer.
Portman's career progressed with her starring roles as Evey Hammond in V for Vendetta (2005), Anne Boleyn in The Other Boleyn Girl (2008), and a troubled ballerina in the psychological horror film Black Swan (2010), for which she won the Academy Award for Best Actress. She went on to star in the romantic comedy No Strings Attached (2011) and featured as Jane Foster in the Marvel Cinematic Universe superhero films Thor (2011), and Thor: The Dark World (2013), which established her among the world's highest-paid actresses. She has since portrayed Jacqueline Kennedy in the biopic Jackie (2016), earning her third Academy Award nomination, and a biologist in the science fiction film Annihilation (2018).
A vocal advocate for animals and environmental protection, and for human rights, Portman is slated to reprise her role as Jane Foster in Thor: Love and Thunder, which is scheduled for release in 2022. She is also set to voice the same character in Marvel's Disney+ animated series What if…?; and will produce and star alongside Lupita Nyong’o in the limited series adaptation of the Laura Lipman novel Lady in the Lake.
Artist bio:
Sid Maurer's (1926-2017) long career spanned decades in the world of Art and Music, beginning at age seventeen when he was hired as Assistant Art Director at Columbia Records in New York City. When the music industry exploded, Maurer designed album covers and promotional material for popular artists, alongside Columbia Records colleague Andy Warhol. Maurer expanded his commercial art studio to tackle a wide range of projects for the music and film industries, while his striking artistic style developed, influenced by artists he met including Pollack and Rauschenberg.
Maurer left the empire of music and art that he had helped to build to focus on his passion: painting. In the last decade, his work has been shown in a wide variety of venues, including the Georgia Capitol, the Carnegie Museum and U.C.L.A. His commissioned artwork includes work for ESPN, MotorSport America Magazine, David Bowie, Boy George, and Donovan.
As a painter, Maurer created large mixed media pieces that were very much a product of his varied training and experience. His style combined bold, dynamic colors and strokes with painstaking layouts and typographical elements. The result is the unique blend of a painter's passion tempered with the calculating compositional eye of a graphic designer, exploring his themes through the use of bold subject matter, symbols and graphics.