George Condo (b. 1957)

"George Condo's world is peopled by mysterious creatures, fanciful characters and more-or-less failed actors - decrepit clowns and waiters, maitre d's and maidens, monsters and maenads --- as if yearning to step into the limelight, [Condo's figures] peer at us cautiously, waiting for a cue. Behind them. the background is as motionless as a stage curtain. Condo's painting is theatre: sometimes opera, sometimes vaudeville, more often a strange combination of Stanislavski method and commedia dell'arte"
(M. Gioni, 'Physiognomic Fragments for the Promotion of Human Understanding and Montrous Love,' in George Condo The Last Civilization, exh. cat. Musée Maillol, Paris, 2009, p. 57).