Hunt Slonem (born Hunt Slonim, July 18, 1951) is an American painter, sculptor, and printmaker. He is best known for his Neo-Expressionist paintings of butterflies, bunnies, and his tropical birds, often based on a personal aviary in which he has been keeping from 30 to over 100 live birds of various species.
After completing school, which included living in Nicaragua as an exchange student when he was 16 years old, Slonem commenced undergraduate studies at Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tennessee. He then spent about six months of his sophomore year at the University of the Americas in San Andrés Cholula, Puebla, Mexico, but later graduated with a Bachelor of Arts degree in Painting and Art History from Tulane University in New Orleans, Louisiana. He also took courses at the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture in Maine, where he was exposed to such influential artists from the New York area as Louise Nevelson, Alex Katz, Alice Neel, Richard Estes, Jack Levine, and Al Held. During that period, Slonem altered the "i" to an "e" in his family name as a nod to numerology. He moved to New York in 1973 to further his art practice, and Manhattan had become his consistent base ever since.
