Houben R.T.

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Houben R.T. (born 1970) is an Avant-garde painter and draftsman with his own unmistakable voice. Houben was born in Bulgaria and graduated with a degree in painting from the Conservative Art Academy in the capital, Sofia. During that time he was part of the Radical art movement around XXL gallery. Although his installations and videos were met with considerable critical success in Europe, he decided to abandon this technique due to its excessive "predictability".

In order to advance his carrier Houben re-located to the US in 2000 where he now lives and works in his studio in Brooklyn, New York. He has exhibited his signature highly impasto, money based paintings, and glitter works in Boston, Miami, and New York. After several museum shows he young artist has created quite a stunning reputation among art dealers and emerging artists in the area.

Before he began selling his art for a living, he supported himself by doing odd jobs in the city. In 2002 he was commissioned to create the murals for the eponymous Delmonico's Restaurant on Wall Street in Manhattan, NY as well as the restaurant/bar Ono in the hip new Gansevoort hotel in New York's hip Meatpacking District.

Houben has a unique approach to art. His alchemist approach towards paint, creates pigments which he grinds himself, that often have very alternative meanings. The subject matter for his paintings is derived from old currencies as well as coins from the US and other countries around the world. His artistic style draws upon Romanticism and Symbolism with "New" in New York a Postmodernist. His art is about the foundation of a society in relation to its history and propaganda. Frequent depiction of native Americans, he claims is his homage to America as was imposed to him as a child by early European Romantics and later from Eastern Germany's western films. The heavy impasto, vivid saturated color palette and unmistakable bravado in his works makes his oeuvre easily recognizable and difficult to reproduce.