2025 Spotlight Artists
Ron Agam
Markowicz Fine Art
Despite his insistence that he is a newcomer in the world of,art, one cannot deny Agam a pedigree. The son of the well known kinetic artist Yaacov Agam, Ron’s work speaks in a similar idiom. Born in France in 1958, Ron was raised between Paris and Israel, and spent his formative years subsumed in the world of art—making it, photographing it, contemplating it. Later, his passion for photography lead to an acclaimed career in that medium.
Arriving in NYC in the 1980’s he founded an art press, and opened the Artlife Gallery in SoHo. In 1994, his debut monograph, At The Wall, granted wide acclaim for his penetrating photographs of the ultra-orthodox at the Western Wall, which launched his career as a world respected photographer. In 2001, galvanized by the events of September 11, Ron rushed to the scene and shot over 1,200 photographs, capturing the simple heroics of people caught up in the sweep of history. This work is now housed in the permanent collection of the 9/11 Memorial Museum. In recognition of his humanitarian and bridge building work throughout the Jewish communities of France, America and Israel, Ron was given France’s highest civic recognition, the Chevalier of the Legion of Honor.
Steeped in the world of art, Ron’s current work comprises several thematic families—kinetic imagery, geometric abstractions, optical experiments, and visual iconography all take residence in his oeuvre.
James Gill
New River Fine Art
James Gill, 91, is an American artist known for his contributions to the pop art movement. Gill gained recognition in the 1960s for his bold and expressive paintings that blended elements of popular culture with fine art techniques. His breakthrough came when his Marilyn Triptych was acquired by the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in New York in 1962, placing him among the leading figures of the pop art era alongside Andy Warhol and Roy Lichtenstein. Unlike many of his contemporaries, Gill often incorporated deeper psychological and social commentary into his work, using vibrant colors and layered compositions to explore themes of celebrity, media, and American identity.
During the height of his career in the 1960s and early 1970s, Gill created striking portraits of cultural icons such as Marilyn Monroe, John F. Kennedy, and the Beatles, however, in the mid-1970s, Gill stepped away from the public art scene to focus on personal artistic exploration, choosing to distance himself from commercial pressures. This period of introspection allowed him to refine his technique and develop a more abstract and introspective approach to his art.
Gill made a notable return to the art world in the 1990s, revisiting his earlier themes with a contemporary perspective. Today, he is regarded as a pioneering artist whose work continues to bridge the gap between classic pop art and modern artistic expression. His works are in the public collection of many of the leading museums in the nation, such as MoMA, The Whitney, National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian American Art Gallery, The Art Institute of Chicago, and many others.
David Hayes
The David Hayes Art Foundation
HFAF has a tradition of presenting significant artist rediscoveries, and is excited to uncover in 2025, the re-introduction of the much accomplished, but overlooked Modernist Sculptor David Hayes. He received his MFA at Indiana University in 1955, where he studied with the famed AbEx sculptor David Smith. He has received a post-doctoral Fulbright award and Guggenheim Fellowship. He was the recipient of the Logan Prize for Sculpture as well as an award from the prestigious National Institute of Arts and Letters. Hayes has had a remarkable 500 exhibitions, nationally and internationally, during his six decade career, and is in the public collection of an amazing 100+ important institutions, including MoMA, The Guggenheim Museum, Detroit Art Institute, Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, Wadsworth Atheneum, Brooklyn Museum, Boca Raton Museum of Art, and many others.
Giancarlo Impiglia
Counterpoint Contemporary
As the art world celebrates the 100th Anniversary of the Art Deco movement, HFAF salutes Mr. Impiglia, 85, whose long time artistic sensibility, which began in the 1970’s has championed and revitalized this important genre.
His first major commission came in 1974, a 60ft mural, which still decorates the lobby of 99 John Street, a building designed by the same architects as the Empire State Building.
99 John established Impiglia’s signature style; it’s far more than simply decorative or aesthetically pleasing, which is how it’s so often described. Indeed, the deliberate beauty of his works are a critique on the materialism and superficiality of society; each figure is depicted as indifferent, faceless satires defined entirely by the folds of their gowns and the glitter of their jewelry. As they blend together into one another and into the background, forming a single tapestry of color and form, their individual identities and true selves—complete with their ambitions, desires, and obsessions—remain obscure; Giancarlo reminds us of the fallacy of individualism and the power of trends and the market. In the age of social media, this is particularly relevant.
Impiglia went on to participate in the famed Absolut Vodka campaign of the 80s, alongside Warhol and Haring. Through the 80s and 90s, he exhibited in numerous galleries in New York and elsewhere, weaving himself into the fabric of the city. A series of murals for Cafe Society, immortalized in the films Big and Boomerang, are a pure representation of that age. So are his many works for Cunard’s Queens, which are particularly reminiscent of the Art Deco style to fit the aesthetic of these luxurious cruise ships, and to harken to the Golden Age of sea travel.
Three large murals hang in the QE2, now a luxury floating hotel in Dubai. Four more murals hang on the Queen Mary 2, and three on the new Queen Elizabeth.
His work is now part of prominent private and public collections around the world including that of Elton John, The Museum of the City of New York, The Victoria and Albert Museum in London, and the Wifredo Lam Center in Havana, Cuba. He held an important retrospective at The National Arts Club in Gramercy in 2016.
Three publications are dedicated to his enduring career: the aforementioned Giancarlo Impiglia, Paintings for the Queens (Lily Publishing, 2012), The Art of Giancarlo Impiglia (Rizzoli, 1995), and Giancarlo Impiglia: Recent Works (Rizzoli, 1982).
Impiglia’s story is very much that of NYC, and with stints as a popular musician in Italy, a graphic designer, and a photojournalist, he embodies the true artist who will stop at nothing to see his vision fulfilled.
Robert Natkin (1930-2010)
Sundaram Tagore Gallery
Celebrated as an unsurpassed colorist and for the beauty of his large-scale abstract works, Robert Natkin was a Chicago-born artist associated with the Color Field and Lyrical Abstraction painters.
The artist and his wife, painter Judith Dolnick, moved to New York in 1959 from Chicago. Natkin kept his distance from other artists, particularly the Abstract Expressionists whose fabled self-destructive behavior unsettled him. For Natkin, art represented the means to psychological fulfillment and a secure middle-class life.
Since 1957, Natkin’s work has been widely exhibited in museums and galleries in the United States and Europe. He had solo shows at the San Francisco Museum of Art, now known as the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (1969); The Art Institute of Chicago (1975); the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington, DC (1981); and The Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum, Ridgefield, Connecticut (1982). His work was featured in numerous group exhibitions, including at the Whitney Museum of American Art (1960), the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum (1973, 1974, 1975, 1977, 1979 and 1980), and The Jewish Museum, New York (1982). During the 1970s he had five solo exhibitions at the esteemed André Emmerich Gallery, New York. In 1981, Harry N. Abrams published Robert Natkin, a lavishly illustrated 360-page monograph with text by noted British art critic Peter Fuller.
Robert Natkin’s work can be found in the collections of The Museum of Modern Art, Brooklyn Museum, Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, and Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; the Los Angeles County Museum of Art; the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden; the Carnegie Museum of Art and Carnegie Institute, Pittsburgh; the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston; the Art Institute of Chicago; and the Centre Pompidou, Paris, among others.
His impressive murals—one commissioned by Baxter Laboratories in Chicago (1975), another by the Millennium Hotel in New York City (1992) where it hangs in the lobby, and the best known, a 20-by-42 foot-work in the lobby of 1211 Avenue of the Americas at Rockefeller Center (1991)—have been enjoyed by millions.
Yigal Ozeri
Corridor Contemporary
New York City based Israeli artist Yigal Ozeri, 67, is known as one of the leading photorealism painters in the world. Specifically, for his large-scale cinematic portraits of distinctive young women in rich prodigious landscapes. With tinges of Pre-Raphaelite aesthetics, Ozeri brings an ethereal and uninhibited sensibility to his paintings. His portraits denote art historical foundations in romanticism, while also offering contemporary notions of sensual femininity.
Rooted in Carl Jung’s concept of anima, Ozeri’s depictions of a revitalized connectivity to nature prompt a confrontation of subconscious effeminate identity, and reinstate the beauty of innocent authentic experience. His photorealistic oil paintings convey the spirit of his subjects, giving way to a seductive power. As a result, the viewer is compelled to gaze into the allegorical domain between reality and fantasy. Ozeri has exhibited globally for decades, including solo exhibits in Bologna, Barcelona, LA, NYC, Toronto, Hong Kong, Amsterdam, France, Denmark, Peru, India and Munich. Yigal Ozeri’s art is in the permanent collections of the Whitney Museum of American Art, the McNay Art Museum, The Jewish Museum, The Israel Museum, Tel Aviv Museum of Art, Smithsonian American Art Museum and many other institutions.
Stephen Rolfe Powell (1951 – 2019)
Trifecta Design Studio
Stephen “Steve” Rolfe Powell (1951 – 2019) was a world renowned American glass artist based at Centre College in Danville, Kentucky, where he taught for more than 30 years. He often created elaborately colored three-foot glass vessels incorporating murrine.
Powell pursued a Master of Fine Arts in ceramics at Louisiana State University in 1980–1983. While there, Powell had his first experience in glass blowing.
In 1985, Powell was briefly an assistant to Dan Dailey and Lino Tagliapietra at the Pilchuck Glass School. In 1990, Powell taught and studied at the Muhkina Glass Institute in Leningrad and the Lvov Glass Factory and Art Institute in Ukraine. Little was known about Soviet glassmaking prior to his visit and he was the first American to be allowed to enter many of these spaces. Powell also co-produced “Lino Tagliapietra: Glass Maestro” in 2000 and published Stephen Rolfe Powell: Glassmaker a book about his career thus far, in 2007. In 2004, he became a founding member of the Community Arts Center, now called Art Center of the Bluegrass. Powell was also vice-president of the Glass Art Society.
Powell’s work is displayed in a number of places, including the Smithsonian American Art Museum, Speed Art Museum, Cincinnati Art Museum, Maker’s Mark Distillery, Tennessee Aquarium, Hermitage Museum, and KMAC Museum. In 2002, his work was exhibited at the Winter Olympics in Salt Lake City, Utah.
Hunt Slonem
Grenning Gallery
Inspired by nature and his 60 pet birds, Hunt Slonem, 74, is renowned for his distinct neo-expressionist style. He is best known for his series of bunnies, butterflies and tropical birds, as well as his large-scale sculptures and restorations of forgotten historic homes. Slonem’s works can be found in the permanent collections of 250 museums around the world, including the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City, the Whitney, the Miro Foundation and the New Orleans Museum of Art.
Since his first solo show at the Fischbach Gallery in 1977, Slonem’s work has been showcased internationally hundreds of times, most recently at the Moscow Museum of Modern Art and the State Russian Museum in St. Petersburg. In 2017 and 2018, he was be featured by the National Museum of the Republic of Kazakhstan, the National Gallery in Bulgaria, and in countless galleries across the United States, Germany and Dubai.
After graduating with a degree in painting and art history from Tulane University in New Orleans, Slonem spent several years in the early 1970s living in Manhattan. His pieces began getting exhibited around New York, propelling his reputation and thrusting him into the city’s explosive contemporary arts scene. He received several prestigious grants, and was introduced to the Marlborough Gallery, which would represent him for 18 years.
As Slonem honed his aesthetic, his work began appearing in unique, contextual spaces. By 1995 he finished a massive six-by-86-foot mural of birds, which shoots across the walls of the Bryant Park Grill Restaurant in New York City. His charity work has resulted dozens of partnerships, including a wallpaper of his famous bunnies designed specifically with Lee Jofa for the Ronald McDonald House in Long Island.
Yet Slonem’s most ambitious project has been his mission to save America’s often forgotten historic buildings. Realizing too many of the country’s architectural gems have fallen into disrepair, Slonem has found himself drawn to these national landmarks, inspired by the depth of their age and old-world beauty.
