John Kiraly (Born 1943) American, Original Oil on Board. Signed and dated bottom right. 1969. 

An early work by the artist, depicting a sprawling two-story homestead with a pool. 

Condition: Appears to be staining along the top. 

Overall Size: 43 1/4 x 37 1/4 in. 

Sight Size: 35 1/2 x 29 1/4 in. 

Frame Thickness: 1 3/4 in. 

John Kiraly was born in New York City in 1943, and when he was ten the family moved to Florida, moving frequently around the southeastern part of the state. He studied art at the University of Miami alongside John Clinkenburg and Eugene Massin on a full scholarship but left school early to pursue a passion for travel which took him around the world. In the late 1960s he opened an art gallery in the Bahamas, frequently traveling between there and Miami to sell and collect works from Caribbean and local artists. In 1972 he met Richard Heyman, a businessman and co-founder of the Gingerbread Square Gallery in Miami, who helped arrange his first solo exhibition of his own oil paintings there. The two men became partners and moved together to Key West in 1973. While Heyman went on to become the first openly gay mayor of an American city in 1983, Kiraly began to study and paint the tropical architecture and plants that would lead him to produce hundreds of landscapes in a style called distilled tropical realism. He explored serigraphy, with his images becoming synonymous with the lifestyle of Key West and the post-colonial Florida coast. In 1983 and 1984 Kiraly’s work was chosen to be exhibited in the Society of the Four Arts in Palm Beach, nationally important shows that were juried by the directors of the San Francisco Museum of Art and The Whitney Museum respectively. He went on to be honored with numerous solo and group exhibitions as well as feature articles in magazines and newspapers on art and the gay experience of his adopted home. Tragically, Heyman died of AIDS-related pneumonia in 1994 at the age of 59 with Kiraly by his side, and the artist began to produce less and less, eventually retiring to Miami in the 2010s. Today his works are in many private and corporate collections, in particular the collections of many well-known actors and actresses.

Appears to be staining along the top.