Gus Heinze, born 1 May, 1926, in Bremen, Germany, is an American photorealist painter. From 1947-1950, Heinze studied under Robert Weaver, Howard Trafton, and Robert Ward Johnson at the School of Visual Arts in New York. During the 1950s and 1960s, he worked as a freelance commercial artist on Madison Avenue. In 1970 he began his career as a photorealist painter in Bondville, Vermont. Many of his paintings from this period depict parts of automobiles and motorcycles in close-up. During this time, he also painted a unique commission of two nudes in 1977, one of which remained in his home on his bedroom wall for over 45 years, before becoming commercially available. In 1978, Heinze relocated to California and began exploring more diverse subjects. He increasingly moved toward storefront windows and city scenes, in a style that he calls "abstract realism," where the subject is real but the point of view and composition give the painting an abstract quality — resulting in a kind of reverse trompe-l’oeil. As his works can appear half-real, half-abstract, it is not surprising that the artist himself describes abstract realism as "a total oxymoron." In addition to his urban subjects, Heinze has also painted dilapidated farm equipment such as tractors and water pumps, and old trains and locomotive engines. In Exactitude: Hyperrealist Art Today, John Russell Taylor writes that "Heinze is fascinated by decaying machinery left behind as the detritus of the Industrial Revolution. The forms are powerful, if inscrutable." He has also done a series of paintings depicting rocky cliffsides, vineyard grapes, and streams. Much of his subject matter is characterized by complex reflections of glass or water, intricate foliage, and deep background blacks with saturated colors in the foreground. In Photorealism at the Millennium, Louis K Miesel writes that Heinze "has not settled into any particular subject matter or point of view. This makes his work less distinctive and recognizable than that of other photorealists, but it also provides him with an added degree of freedom." Heinze's paintings have been featured in the books The Martini and The Cigar, both by Barnaby Conrad III, and many are held in notable corporate collections such as Chase Manhattan Bank in New York and Bank of America World Headquarters in San Francisco. His work has also been prominently featured at the Butler Institute of American Art and the Oklahoma City Museum of Art. He has featured in the following exhibitions in the last 20 years and is held in notable public collections: 2023 - Art Architecture and Design, Artonomi Fine Art, Tiburon2021 – New Beginnings, Spring, Meisel Gallery, New York2020 – American Landscapes, Jan- Feb, Meisel Gallery, New York2018 – Pavement to Pavement, Jan- Feb, Meisel Gallery, New York2017 - Hyperrealism: 50 Years of Painting. Rotterdam, Netherlands & European Tour2016 - Gus Heinze. Painting at 90. Bernarducci Meisel Gallery, New York.2015 - Chelsea Flower Show. Plus One Gallery, London.2014/15 - Hiperrealismo 1967-2013. Bilbao, Spain. 2014 - Photorealism: The Everyday Illuminated. Jonathan Novak Contemporary Art, Los Angeles. Heinze’s accomplishments include 14 solo exhibitions plus more than a dozen group exhibitions including “Hyperrealism 50 Years” which toured Europe in recent years. Selected Public Collections:Allergan Pharmaceuticals, Los Angeles Bank of America World Headquarters, San Francisco Chase Manhattan Bank, New York Dreyer's Grand Ice Cream, Oakland, California Dean Witter Reynolds, San Francisco GTE Corporation, Thousand Oaks, California Hughes Aircraft Corporation, Los Angeles Kaiser Permanente, Fontana, California Transamerica Corporation, Los Angeles Gus is still painting and experimenting at the age of 97 and lives in Tiburon, California, overlooking the sea.