Nude Homeless Drinker

George Condo’s 1999 painting Nude Homeless Drinker comes from the artist’s series of ‘imaginary portraits’. In these paintings, Condo combines naturalistic detail with elements of the absurd and the grotesque. Many of his paintings depict tragicomic, desperate characters with precarious mental states. ‘They may not be pretty’, Condo comments, ‘but I think we can all see ourselves in these pictures.’ Nude Homeless Drinker was exhibited in Mental States, Condo’s major retrospective at the Hayward Gallery in 2011.