George Condo (b. 1957, Concord, New Hampshire) is an American artist renowned for his distinctive figurative paintings that blend European Old Master techniques with contemporary pop culture elements. Coining the term "Artificial Realism" to describe his approach—"the realistic representation of that which is artificial"—Condo creates psychological portraits featuring fractured, often grotesque characters with exaggerated features that simultaneously express multiple emotional states. After studying Art History and Music Theory at the University of Massachusetts Lowell, he began his artistic career in New York's East Village scene of the early 1980s, where he briefly worked in Andy Warhol's Factory applying diamond dust to prints. His artistic journey was catalyzed by meeting Jean-Michel Basquiat in 1979 when their respective bands shared a bill. Condo has exhibited globally, with a major retrospective "Mental States" at the New Museum in 2011, and his works reside in prestigious collections including The Museum of Modern Art, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and the Whitney Museum. Today, Condo lives and works in New York, continuing to influence generations of painters with his unique visual language that navigates between the beautiful and the grotesque.