Matthew Adelberg is a 22-year-old realist figure painter living in Baltimore, Maryland. Adelberg’s fine arts education began at a relatively young age, shortly after his Bar Mitzvah. He attended Carver Center for Arts and Technology (a high school in Towson, Maryland specializing in the visual arts), and studied painting in Colorado with the Marie Walsh Sharpe Program. While studying painting abroad in Italy when he was just 16, he first encountered the Baroque era artist Caravaggio, whose philosophy on naturalism and realism has had a drastic impact on Adelberg’s work to this day. In 2011, Adelberg began working towards his B.F.A. degree at Maryland Institute College of Art (MICA), focusing his attention almost exclusively on painting the figure.
In the summer of 2014 he was chosen to learn from, live with, and be the apprentice of the famed figure painter Odd Nerdrum. Adelberg has since developed relationships with the Wyeth family, and has been influenced heavily by Andrew Wyeth’s naturalism. Adelberg’s work has received numerous awards, including the prestigious Elizabeth Greenshields’ grant, and he has shown his work in a multitude of places including Italy, New York, Miami, and Norway.
Adelberg firmly believes that one must paint what they know, thus his imagery is inspired by his childhood experiences, faith, and the mortality of those closest to him, including his own near-death experience. Adelberg considers himself to be an autobiographical artist, shedding light on issues of violence, faith, mortality, and morality, and his paintings tell stories and express feelings as both a form of self-exploration and catharsis. Adelberg finished his B.F.A. in Painting and Art History from the Maryland Institute College of Art in 2015, studied at Yeshivat Aish Hatorah in Jerusalem in the summer of 2015, and is currently in his last semester of earning a Masters of Art in Teaching at the Maryland Institute College of Art.