NeoMaster™ Painting Ushers in a New Era in Resurrecting Historic Lost Art
Oxia Palus, a new-age company dedicated to using artificial intelligence to resurrect the world’s most important lost artwork, announced today that it has recreated on canvas, the first masterpiece of another era, one lost for nearly 120 years.
MORF Gallery, a Silicon Valley-based gallery delivering technologically advanced bespoke NFTs (non-fungible tokens) and award-winning art, teamed up with Oxia Palus to showcase and offer the world’s first NeoMasterTM.
Using a series of state-of-the-art processes in computer vision and advanced 3D printing, Oxia Palus has resurrected a lost painting believed to be created by Santiago Rusiñol, a leader of the Catalan modernism movement. This unnamed piece — hidden beneath Pablo Picasso’s The Crouching Beggar (La Miséreuse accroupie) (1902) — was revealed by X-radiography 29 years ago.
The lost masterpiece — which has now been selected as the world’s first NeoMaster painting — is a vivid re-creation of a historically significant work of art believed to be of Parc del Laberint d’Horta near Barcelona, a place long recognized as a foundational influence for Rusiñol and Pablo Picasso. Rusiñol’s socially conscious subject matter was integral to Picasso’s artwork during his time in Barcelona.
This extraordinary apparition-like piece of art, shrouded in mystery, has been painstakingly recreated from a mere ghost of the original masterpiece.
To recreate the painting, an Oxia Palus team used a three-dimensional height map that enables paint to be carefully re-layered onto canvas in a way that captures the texture and look of the artist’s style, through a patent-pending technique. The methodology being used to recreate exacting homages to a new breed of fine art has been dubbed the NeoMaster style, which uses Oxia Palus’ neomastic process.
In resurrecting this work beneath The Crouching Beggar, many paintings were referenced that define the style of Rusiñol’s work. The depth, thickness, and approximate length of each and every brushstroke have been re-integrated into an embodiment of what was lost to the ages.
“It is telling that the unveiling of this long-lost art treasure takes place on the 48th anniversary of Pablo Picasso’s passing. It’s an extremely important piece of art history that has been brought back to the world of art, one that was believed to have been lost forever,” said Scott Birnbaum, CEO of MORF Gallery.
Dr. David G. Stork, author of the upcoming book, Pixels and Paintings: Foundations of Computer-assisted Connoisseurship (Wiley), said, “The art world is replete with works that build upon and reinterpret the works of prior masters using new technologies, new approaches, and new media. Amidst a flurry of artistry being created with the aid of AI, the work from Oxia Palus stands out not merely for reinterpreting what was well-known and influential, but in literally bringing to light hidden works by important, well-known artists — works that are little-known even to many experts.”
The team at Oxia Palus relied on machine learning, deep networks, and image analysis to recreate its neomastic art. Guided by what will quickly become a new class of masterpiece re-interpretation, the Oxia Palus approach can be appreciated by practicing computer scientists and art scholars as well as visionary collectors.
“As we use more AI to accelerate the identification and reconstruction of critically important lost art, we will have a highly significant impact on enabling a better understanding of the interwoven history of art and society,” said Oxia Palus co-founder, George Cann.
Oxia Palus and the MORF Gallery are presenting this first NeoMaster in only 100 limited editions. These editions will never be available again. Each canvas is protected by patent-pending anti-fraud technology and is accompanied by an NFT.
