Daniel Graves Painter USA 1949

Daniel Graves Painter USA 1949
Artist and Founder of The Florence Academy of Art
Born in 1949, in Rochester, New York, Daniel Graves graduated from the
Maryland Art Institute of Art in 1972 where he studied with Joseph Sheppard
and Frank Russell. He continued his studies at the Villa Schifanoia Graduate
School of Fine Art in Florence, Italy, with Richard Serrin. Following a course
of training with Richard Lack in Minneapolis, Minnesota, he taught at the
Atelier Lack Studio of Fine Art. In the late 1970s, Graves returned to Florence
and undertook individual study with Nerina Simi, who maintained a classical
nineteenth-century studio. Ms. Simi was the daughter of the Florentine painter
Filadelfo Simi, who had studied with Jean-Léon Gérôme, the head of the
French Academy in Paris in the 1870s.
With such a rich background of training, Graves has created a style of oil
painting that blends the Florentine tradition of Simi and the realist painter,
Pietro Annigoni, with the draftsmanship of the French artist, Charles Bargue.
Daniel Graves joined Charles Cecil to found Studio Cecil-Graves in Florence, which for nearly a decade
trained many practitioners of classical realism. In 1991, Graves established The Florence Academy of Art
(FAA). His philosophy, which underlies the Academy’s curriculum and method of instruction, demands a
return to discipline in art, to canons of beauty, and to the direct study of nature. He was the first to discover
Bargue’s, Cours des Dessins, and integrate this masterwork into the Academy’s teaching curriculum. Under
Graves’ direction, The Florence Academy of Art has continued at the forefront of classical realist art
education for over thirty years.
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