Pearlstein, Philip (1924- ), American painter, best known for his stark, precise, unidealized depictions of nude figures. He was a leading proponent of an art movement in the 1960s, sometimes referred to as new realism, which advocated a return to the representation of the human figure, in contrast to the prevailing dominance of abstraction.

Pearlstein was born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, where he earned a bachelor of fine arts degree from Carnegie Institute of Technology in 1949. He then moved to New York City, where, in 1955, he received his master's degree from New York University. In the early 1950s he worked in the turbulent style of the dominant New York painting school, abstract expressionism, but unlike that of the abstract expressionists, his work was never abstract. Pearlstein was awarded a prestigious Fulbright Fellowship in 1958 to spend a year traveling and painting in Italy.

In the early 1960s Pearlstein began painting nudes directly from life, rather than working from sketches. His subjects were viewed from close range, with a cool, unsentimental style that he would become known for. His canvases of this period typically depicted one or two nude figures, often seen from odd angles, with their hands, feet, or heads cropped out of the picture.

These paintings were nearly monochromatic, with titles as factual and literal as the canvases, such as Two Nudes with Back of Painting (1965, private collection, Chicago). Pearlstein accentuated the physical imperfections of his subjects by bathing them in harsh, artificial light and cold shadows, a method he also used in portraits painted during this same period.

His work became more colorful in the mid-1970s, and he began to pay closer attention to details in setting, placing monumental nudes amid precisely rendered furniture, parquet floors, kimonos, or quilts, as in Female Model on Lozenge-Patterned Drape (1977, private collection, New York). Quirky props began to appear in his paintings of the mid-1980s, revealing Pearlstein's whimsical sense of humor, as in Two Models by Window with Cast Iron Toys (1987, Hirschl and Adler Modern, New York City).