Why So Many New Figurative Paintings Are Missing Faces

Limbs intertwine and entangle across Dutch artist Bobbi Essers’s canvases, where arms meld into legs and fingers lace through fragments of skin, creating a dynamic interplay of sinewy muscles and protruding ribs. By zooming in, cropping, and intersecting, Essers abstracts the human body in a way that feels part–exquisite corpse and part–defaced marble sculpture. Yet something remains conspicuously absent—the faces. This deliberate omission emphasizes the body’s expressive potential, echoing a broader trend in contemporary figurative abstraction where fragmented limbs take center stage, obscuring personal identities.

The current focus on fragmented, faceless bodies represents a significant shift from painting’s traditional role. Typically, portraiture functioned as a status symbol, celebrating the wealth and power of its subjects through highly individualized depictions. Moreover, the recent trend for “hypersentimentalism” has seen artists such as Anna Weyant, Jenna Gribbon, and Elizabeth Peyton center recognizable figures in their work. In contrast, today many contemporary artists are subverting this legacy by deliberately omitting faces. By prioritizing the nuances of bodily movement over recognizable features, these artists propose a more universal language.

Painters focusing on limbs

For Essers, whose current show “The World at Our Command” is on view at Unit through December 8th, the omission of the face allows her to explore memory, relationships, and identity in new ways. “The body is a central focus in my paintings because it reveals so much about my loved ones, our connections, and our lives,” Essers explained. She described the fragmented nature of her compositions as a nod to how memory often functions—fleeting, incomplete, and distorted by emotion.

By highlighting limbs—arms, legs, and hands—Esser captures the most expressive and overlooked parts of the human form. She suggests that the viewer instead reads body language; a sloping shoulder or languid arm conveys all one needs to know about her subjects. “Without the face, viewers can fully appreciate these details because every nuance matters. If I included the face, viewers would naturally be drawn to it,” she said.

Her subjects, often queer and nonbinary individuals, embody fluidity—and by omitting faces, Essers affords her subjects greater flexibility in how their gender is perceived. “The beautiful bodies I paint are not meant to be confined by labels; they simply exist as they are,” she explained. In other words, her work portrays the body not as a static marker of the self, but rather as a changing and permeable entity.

Preslav Kostov, whose exhibition “Between the Five Wells” recently closed at Tara Downs Gallery, shares a similar interest in the fragmented, faceless body, though his approach diverges from Essers’s personal exploration of relationships. Instead, Kostov is preoccupied by the “friction of involuntary coexistence,” he said. He likens his figures to actors on a stage, playing out human conflict and adaptation.

“Anonymity under the form of uniformity is certainly an important aspect of the work,” he said, explaining that he views his figures as tools for exploring broader social and cultural themes. For Kostov, the removal of the face depersonalizes the figures, making them stand-ins for broader human experiences rather than individuals.

A new body language in painting

In his practice, Kostov draws from his experience as an immigrant, with distorted figures reflecting the physical and emotional challenges of adapting to alien environments. Like Essers, Kostov invites viewers to draw their own conclusions rather than gleaning the figures’ emotions through facial expressions. But where Essers’s work emphasizes intimacy and connection, Kostov’s figures embody societal friction and collective struggle around identity.

This exploration of the faceless body extends beyond Essers and Kostov. In many of Bre Andy’s stylish paintings—on view in her recent solo show at Cierra Britton Gallery—she probes the complexities of bodily autonomy and societal pressures. Through her faceless figures, characterized by exaggerated proportions and twisted postures, Andy subverts traditional representations of femininity, confronting the societal expectations that shape our understanding of selfhood.

Alluring anonymity

Barcelona-born, Chicago-based painter Noelia Towers introduces a provocative element to the concept of anonymity in her art through her highly detailed, photorealistic compositions. Her work explores themes drawn from fetish culture, S&M, and power dynamics. In her 2023 exhibition “Father Figure” at de boer’s Antwerp gallery, Towers presented anonymized human bodies in deliberately awkward, highly sexualized scenarios, exploring the tension between exposure and concealment. Her paintings, such as Bruised Cheek (2022) and Persuasion (2022), depict suggestively posed anonymous bodies with exposed skin, and are both vulnerable and intense.

Similarly, Scottish painter Florence Reekie challenges traditional portraiture by leaving her subjects’ faces out of view, focusing instead on the material and textural elements that surround them. In My Dad Calls This One Suggestive (2021), Reekie’s attention centers on a hand delicately lifting swathes of fabric, creating a scene that is both sensuous and enigmatic. Identity is inferred through clothing and material rather than through physical likeness. Reekie’s masterful portrayal of a taffeta-like texture transforms the fabric into a stand-in for her subjects’ bodies. These draped materials act as both a shield and a statement.