Inducted in 2018
Charles Bell is an internationally-known artist, renowned as a pioneer of Photorealism. Charles earned a bachelor’s degree in business administration from Oklahoma University, then joined the U.S. Navy and served as a lieutenant. After the Navy, Charles lived in San Francisco and started painting. never received any formal training in art, but studied under various master painters. He moved to New York City in 1967, worked as an accountant, and became comptroller of International Nickel Corporation. He also set up his own New York loft studio on West Broadway, concentrating on painting small-scale landscapes and still lifes, and working from photographs. He received the Society of and Western Artists Award in 1968.
By 1980 he had left the corporate world and become a full-time artist. With subjects including vintage toys, pinball machines, gum ball machines, and dolls and action figures arranged in classical poses, Bell brought pictorial majesty and wonder to everyday objects. Painting primarily in oil, Bell’s work is noted for bright colors, for the way he captures the surfaces of his subjects, including glass and other reflective surfaces, and for their grand scale, often ten times life size. Louis K. Meisel Gallery showed Charles Bell paintings, beginning in 1969, and Meisel recognized his talent as a pivotal element in defining Photorealism.
Referring to growing up in Tulsa Public Schools and the influence it had on his career, Charles once said, “I was fortunate to grow up in a school system that taught art each year through junior high.” He also credited his inspiration to “summer art programs for kids at Tulsa’s Philbrook Art Center and family trips to the Gilcrease Museum.”
Bell’s works are housed in such major collections as Philbrook, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York, and the Hiroshima City Museum of Contemporary Art, Japan.
