John DeAndrea roared out of the gate at exactly the right time to become the premier hyperrealist sculptor of astonishingly lifelike nudes. Ignoring abstractionism, which had dominated American and European art for decades, DeAndrea was the first artist to perfect casting sculptures from live models. His life cast statues have natural-looking hair, eyelashes, and fingernails, and they are painted to eerie perfection with accurate skin tones and the model's pores, veins, and small imperfections. After his first solo exhibit (1970) at the OK Harris Gallery in New York—at which all the pieces sold the first night, a rare accomplishment—DeAndrea quickly added to his reputation by appearing in the Whitney Annual of Contemporary American Sculpture in New York in 1970 and, in 1972, the Biennale in Paris; the Kunstmarkt in Cologne, Germany; and documenta 5 in Kassel, Germany. From OK Harris to a planned 2021 solo exhibition at the Galerie Vallois, Paris, DeAndrea has maintained his reputation in the art world for half a century. DeAndrea's work is in the permanent collections of American and foreign museums and has been seen in over 30 solo shows and 100 group art exhibits, from Hyperrealistes Americains (Paris, 1972), Images of Man (Tokyo, 1992), and Convincing Illusions (New York, 2004) to the Biennale di Venezia (Venice, 2013) and the multi-country Hyperrealistic Sculpture Review (2016–2021). His sculptures continue to be in demand by collectors in Europe, the United States, and the Far East. DeAndrea is represented by the Galerie Vallois, Paris, and the Louis K. Meisel Gallery, New York. "A premiere sculptor of the American photorealist artist group in the 1970s, John DeAndrea established a new level of literal realism within the ongoing tradition of figurative sculpture." ("The Color of Life: Polychromy in Sculpture from Antiquity to the Present," Ed. Roberta Panzanelli, J. Paul Getty Museum Publications and the Getty Research Institute, Los Angeles, California, 2008, p. 173)