Actor, environmental activist and art collector? What does DiCaprio not do that’s above and beyond? When he’s not on a movie set or preparing a new speech on how to save the planet, Leonardo DiCaprio is seen frequenting major art auctions in search of new pieces to add to his already expansive art collection. From pieces from the renowned Jean-Michel Basquiat, cartoonists Robert Williams and Robert Crumb and along with a commissioned portrait by Elizabeth Peyton, DiCaprio has honed his eye for up-and-coming artists as well as already established ones. So, it is no surprise that Leonardo DiCaprio scored big on purchasing a flashy new and hyper-realistic painting by the ever so talented Jean-Pierre Roy. The title of the painting is Landscape With Divergent Perceptual Reference, and it is a part of a series Roy is currently working on called “Aporetic Sequence.”
Roy is a Brooklyn-based artist born in 1974. He received his MFA from the New York University of Art and currently teaches painting there. He has had five solo exhibitions in New York alone and many more abroad; his hyper-realistic paintings have been purchased by other big names such as Anita Zabludowics, Jereann Cheney, Beth Rudin Dewoody, Jean Pigoezi, Bjorn Borg and of course Leonardo DiCaprio.
Courtesy: artnet News
Both Roy and DiCaprio were born in California and surprisingly, Roy and DiCaprio apparently go way back as elementary school friends with DiCaprio deeply respecting the artist Roy had become as they grew older. DiCaprio enjoys Roy’s hyper-realistic, apocalyptic pieces so much that he often collects them from Roy himself. DiCaprio purchased Roy’s other piece, Nachlass, back in 2015, so dropping thirty-eight thousand dollars on Roy’s new particular piece was a no-brainer for DiCaprio.
If you are interested in seeing more of Jean-Pierre Roy’s surreal paintings, you can view them on his website.
And if you want to see more of the art in Leonardo DiCaprio’s collection, some of those pieces can be viewed here.