Biography
Michael Pinchera, who was born in Detroit in 1953, had a strong, early affinity for art, an interest supported by his parents. He was especially devoted to drawing the natural world, and in his late teens he attended The Society of Arts and Crafts (now known as the Center for Creative Studies), concentrating on drawing and printmaking. At 19 he was hired at a Detroit commercial art studio as an illustrator’s apprentice. At this stage, Pinchera was first drawn to the works of the Impressionists and the Surrealists, followed by the paintings of Miró, who he particularly prized for the poetic quality of his work. Along with Picasso’s work, Pinchera was attracted most intensely to the art of Klee and Kandinsky, whose visionary paintings combined abstraction and figurative elements.
In the late 1970s, Pinchera attended Thomas Jefferson College and continued to paint, while majoring in psychology and sociology. He later studied to become a Waldorf elementary school teacher, encountering the philosophy of Rudolph Steiner, which would prove to be fundamental to his approach as an artist. Anthroposophy, Rudolph Steiner’s world view, focuses on the spiritual reality behind everyday life. Access to this reality is possible through logical thought and the training of one’s awareness, by looking at oneself and the world. Art and color play a role in this process, and Pinchera later discovered that his two primary influences, Klee and Kandinsky, had been directly affected by Steiner’s thinking.
Pinchera taught in Waldorf schools in Austin, TX and Davis, CA, before moving to Idaho in 1996. He continued teaching there and currently teaches private art classes in Sagle, ID, where he lives with his wife and two stepsons. The current phase of Pinchera’s work began in 1998, with the painting Where I Stand is My Home, which is distinguished both by symbols of the spirit and by vivid color. The paintings from this period feature both natural forms and an atmospheric sense of light. Pinchera has noted that his work as a painter is integrated with his own path of development as a person. The paintings that followed have a strong sense of abstract form and of representing personal experience through multivalent symbolism. In the recent works, a feeling of organic and psychic growth is realized through compositions painted in glowing layers of acrylic glazes.
Pinchera has participated in a solo exhibition at the Interplayers Theater in Spokane, and in many group exhibitions, including four at the Amsterdam-Whitney Gallery in New York. In 2006, an exhibition is planned for the 78th Street Gallery in Santa Fe.
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John Mendelsohn
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