John Kacere

Born on June 23, 1920 to a Lebanese-American family in Walker, Iowa, Kacere received his BFA and MFA from the University of Iowa in 1949 and 1950 respectively. He showed artistic ability as a child and did his first professional sign-painting job at age 12. After studying at art school in Chicago from 1938 through 1940 and serving in the army, Kacere studied fine arts at the University of Iowa, earning his B.F.A. and M.F.A. in 1949 and 1950 respectively. He passed away on August 5, 1999 in Cedar Rapids, IA at the age of 79. Kacere’s artistic journey took him from abstract painting to developing what would become his signature style—monumental, cropped depictions of the female form that challenged traditional categories of portraiture, landscape, and still life.
Kacere was closely associated with Ivan Karp’s O.K. Harris Gallery in SoHo, New York, which played a pivotal role in introducing Photorealism to the public. In 1972, the Speed Art Museum in Louisville acquired Purple Panties (ca. 1969), a purchase that curator Miranda Lash later described as revolutionary. For years, the Speed Art Museum treated Kacere’s Light Purple Panties, Zippered Slip as an iconic work in their collection, selling matchbooks and posters featuring the painting. The work was included in the museum’s 2018 exhibition Breaking the Mold: Investigating Gender, where it was hung in dialogue with works by Barbara Kruger, Louise Nevelson, Gladys Nilsson, and Ebony G. Patterson, engaging in a discussion around standards of beauty and sexuality. Recent exhibitions include the 2020 survey Remembering John Kacere at Louis K. Meisel Gallery and the 2024 exhibition Butt Can You Feel It? at Gratin Gallery in New York’s East Village.
Today, Kacere’s work can be found in the collections of the Stedeljik Museum in Amsterdam, The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, the Erie Art Museum in Pennsylvania, the Portland Art Museum, and the Wadsworth Atheneum in Hartford, among others.