Hernan Bas Miami, Florida, USA, b. 1978

Hernan Bas, born in Florida in 1978, lives and works in his hometown, where he studied at the New World School of the Arts.

His primary declared influences are Romanticism and Decadentism. In his portraits, Bas updates the figure of the damned youth—doomed, apathetic, asocial, dandyish, skeptical, and excessive. In the objects and backgrounds he paints, however contemporary they may appear, it is possible to trace the attributes of his antiheroes, whose eccentricities evoke in the viewer the same sense of unease as their eighteenth- and nineteenth-century predecessors. Bas employs a broad color palette that can shift toward somber tones or become charged with an ambiguous vibrancy.

Institutions that have hosted his solo exhibitions include, among others, the Museum of Art, Miami; Yuz Museum, Shanghai; Space K, Seoul; the Rubell Museum, Miami; the Centro de Arte Contemporáneo de Málaga; the Colby College Art Museum, Waterville; the SCAD Museum of Art, Savannah; and Kunstverein Hannover. He has also participated in group exhibitions such as Strike Fast, Dance Lightly: Artists on Boxing, The Norton Museum of Art, West Palm Beach; What’s Going On, Rubell Museum, Washington, D.C.; Fire Figure Fantasy: Selections from ICA Miami’s Collection, Institute of Contemporary Art, Miami; Eternal Forest, Paradise Art Space, Incheon; Where Is the Madness You Promised Me: Dystopian Paintings from the Marc & Livia Straus Collection, Hudson Valley Museum of Contemporary Art, Peekskill; Generation Loss, Julia Stoschek Collection, Düsseldorf; On the Horizon: Contemporary Cuban Art from the Jorge M. Pérez Collection, Pérez Art Museum Miami; Tracing Shadows, PLATEAU, Samsung Museum of Art, Seoul, South Korea (2015); On Painting, Centro Atlántico de Arte Moderno, Las Palmas de Gran Canaria, Spain (2013); Contemporary Magic: A Tarot Deck Art Project, The Andy Warhol Museum, Pittsburgh; and Triumph of Painting: Part III, Saatchi Gallery, London, among others.