Contemporary Urban Landscapes

An urban landscape revolves around the energy of the city, its individual houses, squares and vehicle-lined streets… The contemporary urban landscape artist uses color and light to highlight an ever-changing setting. The origins of this movement arguably lie in the Middle Ages with architecture used as a backdrop in paintings but by the 17th century, it  became popular among Dutch painters. The likes of Hayden, Goyen, Reisdahl and of course Vermeer, depicted everyday life framed by the urban landscape. It is through such artists that the viewer can be aided in imagining a cityscape prior to electricity and mass-industrialization. 

Today artists such as Raluca Vulcan and Jerome Bauduin now capture a cityscape belonging not just to them but to everyone in it. Bauduin is a true poet of urban nights, showing bright neon-lit halos and liquid colors as he attempts to capture our feeling about the city. Simultaneously, Vulcan has also been dealing with contemporary urban landscapes, scenes of life, in a colorful, luminous and intense vision. In what can be perceived as a complex subject matter, the artists of urban landscape are archivists for a record of human interaction with its environment and they construct and inhabit the color and light filled spaces within it…