Romain de Plas

This first monograph of paintings by Romain de Plas arrives nine years after his untimely death. The seventy works reproduced here reveal the progression from de Plas's first mature paintings to the full flowering of his talent as he reached his early thirties. Written contributions by Agnes Gund, David Frankel, and Michael Whittaker Martin, as well as a recently discovered interview with the artist himself, place his work within a broader cultural context while revealing de Plas's unique personal history. Romain de Plas was born in Paris in 1971, and lived there until his family moved to New York City in 1980. When de Plas was seven years old, he suffered a devastating sledding accident resulting in extensive injuries to his face and skull, which required reconstructive surgeries at regular intervals over the next twenty-five years. It is against this background that he developed as an artist. De Plas studied liberal arts at Brown University and painting at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, where he received his bachelor of fine arts degree in 1998. He lived and worked in New York, with regular extended returns to Paris, for the rest of his life. At the time of his accidental death in September 2002, de Plas had completed nine of eleven planned paintings of the World Trade Center. These remarkable pictures will be exhibited for the first time at the Museum of the City of New York, in conjunction with the tenth anniversary of 9/11. This volume highlights the natural alignment of this final body of work with de Plas's previous artistic explorations of his interior and exterior environments.