About A.B. Makk - Biography

Finding inspiration in the natural beauty of Hawaii where he has lived and worked since1967, A.B. Makk creates sparkling water scenes and sublime landscape paintings that have received international acclaim. His work is collected and exhibited widely, with museum and gallery exhibitions in the United States, Canada, Europe and Japan.

Distinguished connoisseurs such as George Montgomery and Charlton Heston are among the many collectors who enjoy paintings by A.B. Makk. Also, A.B. Makk is winner of a number of awards, such as Distinguished Americans Award for Excellence in Scenic Painting, New York Graphic Society Recognition for Impressionistic Painting, and Arpad Academy Gold Medal.

Born in 1951 in Sao Paulo, Brazil, A.B. Makk is the son of illustrious artists Eva Makk and Americo Makk. The Makks are known today as “the world’s leading family of artists”.

A.B. (short for Americo Bartholomew) took up brush and palette as normally as other children reach for ice cream cones: with enjoyment and pleasure. He was exhibiting his paintings at the age of four by the insistence of his patron and first collector, Don Jose Tupinamba de Frotas, a Bishop of Ceara. The Brazilian press reviewed these young works and wrote enthusiastically about the "Little Picasso."
His childhood contained a potpourri of exotic and extraordinary experiences, which undoubtedly were impressed upon his young mind and evidence themselves today in his painting style. A.B. Makk traveled with his parents as they received exciting painting commissions throughout Brazil. Often he spent hours, even whole days, on scaffolds where Eva and Americo Makk were creating murals. When only seven years of age, he traveled deep into the Amazon jungle for more than a year with his parents during their commission to paint the indigenous tribal people, facing a primitive world filled with peril and fierce natural beauty.

A.B. Makk's art training included studies throughout Brazil. He came to the United States with his parents in 1962, attended high school and art school in New York, and moved with them to Hawaii in 1967. After graduating Phi Beta Kappa from the University of Hawaii with majors in psychology and languages, A.B. continued his intensive art apprenticeship under his parents. Since then, he has exhibited regularly in galleries and museums in the United States, Canada, Europe and Japan, and has won numerous awards and honors for his paintings.

A.B. Makk absorbed his parent’s techniques, developed a blend of his own and now works in his own unique genre. He starts with colors where Monet and Renoir left off; he blends color after color in combinations that historically have not been used together to create sun-drenched warmth on a cool day or conversely, to insulate wafts of cool air on a hot day. Like Turner, his scenes of nature evoke a strong sense of mood.

His manipulation of light to express beauty and dignity, his ability to paint a complex and many-faceted feeling as opposed to merely a beautiful scene and his sense of depth and serenity are among the qualities that have moved A.B. Makk into the forefront of notable contemporary artists.