Berkeley Pinto

The painting by American artist Robert Bechtle seems to perfectly sum up the suburban idyll in its 1970s’ incarnation: family, house, car, front garden. All the elements in the picture appear to be in harmony with one another – an impression that is further enhanced by the choice of colours and the play of light and shadow. As in many of his works, Bechtle’s subject matter is drawn from his immediate environment and circle of friends. In this painting, we see the artist John De Andrea, who, together with wife and child, poses in front of Bechtle’s Ford Pinto. The Ford Pinto, explicitly mentioned in the painting’s title, was one of the few affordable small cars then produced in the US - cars being, incidentally, among the artist’s favourite subjects. Robert Bechtle started painting photo-realistic pictures in the middle of the sixties – at a time, that is, when the art world’s attention was firmly focussed on Pop Art. The motifs around which his work revolves all come from within his own sphere of life; as Bechtle himself once said, they can be largely accounted for by his own middle class upbringing. Today, Bechtle is regarded as one of the pioneers of photo-realistic painting.