Late 20th-century painting style based on photography, in which realistic scenes are rendered in meticulous detail.
An offshoot of Pop art , it became a trend in U.S. painting in the 1970s among artists fascinated by camera images. Though photographs had been used by 19th-century painters such as Eugène Delacroix as substitutes for reality, the Photo-Realists relied on the photograph itself, replicating it in large-scale detail as the reality on which to base an acrylic painting . Its subjects often included reflecting surfaces (chrome-plated diners, motorcycles, glass-fronted buildings, etc.). Its awesome technical precision, brilliant colour schemes, and visual complexity earned the style wide popularity. Its most notable practitioners were Chuck Close , Don Eddy, Richard Estes, and Audrey Flack.