Artist: Sid Maurer
Title: Penelope Cruz
Year created: 2010
Medium: Original Mixed Media Painting on Wood Board
Edition: Original Unique Artwork
Height (inches): 24
Width (inches): 18
Signed by the artist twice, front and back
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 Penelope Cruz measures 24” in height x 18” width. The artwork is signed twice by the artist: first, on the front of the artwork, lower right; and on the reverse, where Maurer has also titled and dated the work.
Penelope Cruz 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.
PENELOPE CRUZ (née Penélope Cruz Sánchez) made her acting debut at the age of 16 on television, and her feature film debut the following year in Jamón Jamón (1992). Penelope Cruz is the first Spanish actress to win an Academy Award, as well as the first Spanish actress to receive a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.
Cruz’s roles in the 1990s and 2000s included Belle Époque (1992), Open Your Eyes (1997), The Hi-Lo Country (1999), The Girl of Your Dreams (2000), and Woman on Top (2000). Cruz achieved recognition for her lead roles in the 2001 films Vanilla Sky, All the Pretty Horses, Captain Corelli's Mandolin, and Blow. Cruz’s subsequent roles are diverse, in a wide variety of film genres, including the comedy Waking Up in Reno (2002), the thriller Gothika (2003), the Christmas film Noel (2004), the action-adventure films Sahara (2005) and Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides (2011), the romantic comedy To Rome with Love (2012), the crime drama The Counselor (2013), and the mystery film Murder on the Orient Express (2017).
She received acclaim for her roles in Volver (2006) and Nine (2009), receiving Golden Globe and Academy Award nominations for each. For her role playing volatile painter María Elena in Vicky Cristina Barcelona, Penelope Cruz won the 2008 Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress.
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.