Condo studied art history and music theory at the University of Massachusetts in Lowell. After working in Andy Warhol’s Factory, he decamped to Paris in 1985 for a decade and resettled in Manhattan in 1995: “I felt I had to come back to New York with a statement that would stand up against Andy Warhol’s soup cans. And the irony was that it turned out to be Old Master painting”. Condo experimented with the concept he called Artificial Realism – the realistic representation of that which is artificial.

In a career spanning more than three decades, Condo’s highly original and distinctive body of work has consistently drawn upon art historical traditions and genres, in order to hold a mirror up to contemporary social norms and reflect American culture of his time. His work daringly fused the sensibilities of European Old Master painting blending their imagery and techniques with aesthetics that echo “Avignonin naiset” by Pablo Picasso, “Studies from human body” by Francis Bacon and “Woman”figures by Willem de Kooning with references to popular American culture, including Playboy magazine, comics and cartoons. Condo is widely recognized as the ‘missing link’ that connects the figurative tradition begun by Old Masters to his contemporaries, John Currin, Glenn Brown, Dana Schutz and others.