Plate (suite, plate 5) from Encantadas

Rico Lebrun was an American painter and draftsman whose figural work emerged from a deep engagement with the old masters, particularly the expressionist distortion found in Mannerist and Baroque sources. Working primarily in oil and charcoal, he created monumental compositions of contorted bodies and psychological intensity that reflected postwar anxiety and human vulnerability. His large-scale drawings and paintings often incorporated religious and mythological themes, rendered through a gestural, heavily worked surface that privileged emotional rawness over representational clarity.