Robert De Niro Sr. began his painting career at a young age and quickly gained national attention and respect. In a 1999 Newsweek article, author Christopher Dickey noted: "In 1950s New York, the Robert De Niro that people talked about was often mentioned in the same breath as Jackson Pollock and Willem de Kooning. He was named one of the most promising painters of his generation." Despite the reigning dogma that to be a serious painter one had to paint abstractly, De Niro remained resolutely representational and stood apart from the majority of Post-War artists in New York. Like his Bay Area Figurative counterparts on the West Coast, De Niro was well versed in Abstract Expressionism—De Niro had been one of Hans Hofmann's star students—utilizing many of Hofmann’s devices on his canvases. De Niro also maintained a strong affinity for the School of Paris and the work of Henri Matisse in particular. However, representational subject matter was something that he did not wish to discard. De Niro reconciled the influences of American and European Abstraction as a means of exploring the Modernist concerns of color, texture and form to fully explore his personal interest. De Niro pushes his subjects towards the abstract, by flattening the forms and minimizing any separation of subject and ground. His brushwork carries a distinct emotional energy translating into a highly gestural surface. De Niro heightens the tension between subject and form, creating a dialogue and interplay between the person or place depicted and the formal means by which it is produced that gives their work its particular charge. Museum List:Ackland Art Museum, The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, NC Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo, NYBaltimore Museum of Art, Baltimore, MDBrooklyn Museum, Brooklyn, NYChase Manhattan Bank, New York, NYCorcoran Gallery of Art, Washington, DCCrocker Art Museum, Sacramento, CADenver Art Museum, Denver, COHirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, DC Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, NYThe National Academy Museum, New York, NYNeuberger Museum of Art, Purchase College, State University of New York, NY Oakland Museum of California, Oakland, CAParrish Art Museum, Southampton, NYProvincetown Art Association and Museum, Provincetown, MARhode Island School of Design Museum, Providence, RISmithsonian American Art Museum, Washington, DCWhitney Museum of American Art, New York, NYYale University Art Gallery, New Haven, CT