John Clem Clarke

John Clem Clarke was born in Bend, Oregon on June 6, 1937. He studied at Mexico City College, at Oregon State University, and at the University of Oregon where he received a bachelor of fine arts degree in 1960. Clarke's work straddles Pop Art and Appropriation. In his best known work of the 1960s and 1970s, Clarke updated scenes from classical art with contemporary figures and settings. The artist's work has been included in numerous exhibitions on contemporary American realism, and is found in the public collection of the Smithsonian American Art Museum and the Museum of Modern Art in New York, among others.