Charles Bell (painter)

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Charles Bell (1935 – 1995) was an American Photorealist. After Bell's death in 1995, Louis K. Meisel became the owner of all intellectual property rights to the body of art created by Charles Bell. Bell’s work was distinguished by the fact that the subject matter is depicted in a scale as much as ten times life size. The colors are the clearest and most vibrant that can be achieved in oil paint. Nostalgia describes a major aspect of this.^[1] Shortly before his death in 1995 he was employed as a studio bassist, playing with musicians such as Victor Wooten.

Bell's work, created in his New York loft studio on West Broadway just south of Canal Street, is noted not only for the glass-like surface of his works, done largely in oil, but also for their significant scale.

With a subject matter primarily of vintage toys, gumball machines, and dolls and action figures (the latter frequently arranged in classical poses), Bell sought to bring pictoral majesty and wonder to the mundane.

His works are housed in the Block Museum of Art at Northwestern University, Illinois, Nassau County Museum of Art, Roslyn Harbor, New York, and the Savannah College of Art and Design, Savannah, Georgia, among others.