Salman Toor Biography

Salman Toor Biography

Who Is Salman Toor

Salman Toor was born in Lahore, Pakistan in 1983 (age 40 as of 2023). He went to Aitchison College in Lahore, Pakistan. In 2006, he earned a Bachelor of Fine Arts (Painting and Drawing) with Honors from Ohio Wesleyan University in Delaware, Ohio.

In 2009, he got a Master of Fine Arts (Painting) from The Pratt Institute in Brooklyn, New York. He was granted American citizenship in 2019.

Toor began drawing as a child in Pakistan to escape his strict surroundings, depicting imaginary friends and imaginative events. In 2002, the artist relocated to the United States to study painting and Western art history, finding influence from Dutch Golden Age painting, a seventeenth-century realist painting movement famed for its vivid images of common human interaction and astute societal insights.

Salman Toor Education

Toor received his Bachelor of Fine Arts (BFA) from Pakistan’s National College of Arts (NCA) in Lahore. He later moved to the United States and received an MFA from the Pratt Institute in New York City.

Salman Toor Career

Salman Toor’s work is distinguished by his bold and expressive use of color, personal situations, and exploration of modern themes affecting the South Asian diaspora and LGBTQ+ community. He draws inspiration from his personal experiences to merge features of Western art historical traditions with a South Asian sensibility.

Toor’s paintings of gatherings, parties, and domestic situations, in which his figures are depicted with a mixture of vulnerability and strength, drew a lot of attention and recognition. His work has been defined as a blend of conventional portraiture and a contemporary exploration of identity and belonging. In his paintings, he typically incorporates interwoven tales, inviting viewers to contemplate the emotions and relationships shown in the images.

Salman Toor Net Worth

We do not have any recent information regarding his net worth. Stay tuned for more information.

Interesting Fact About Salman Toor

• Toor is a member of the LGBTQ painting collective ‘New Queer Intimists.’ Doron Langberg, Louis Fratino, Kyle Coniglio, Anthony Cudahy, TM Davy, and Devan Shimoyama are among his contemporary painters.
• In an interview, the artist claimed that he initially drew inspiration for his artworks from Pakistani ads.
• However, when he began to focus more on art, he found inspiration in paintings from earlier periods such as the Baroque, Neoclassical, and Rococo periods.
• He said in an interview that he was inspired by artists such as Van Dyck, Peter Paul Reubens, Caravaggio, and Watteau.
• Most of Toor’s pieces in his solo exhibition ‘How Will I Know’ (2020-2021) at the Whitney Museum of American Art were purchased by museum benefactors before the show even opened.
• Toor received the Joan Mitchell Foundation’s Painters and Sculptors Grant in 2019.
• Toor was not interested in modern art at the start of his career; instead, he created competent and modern copies of classic portraits, landscapes, and sceneries from the Renaissance to the seventeenth century.

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