title: James Seehafer
text: # James Seehafer
  
  James Seehafer (/siːheɪfər/;) is a painter and multi media artist known chiefly for founding the Massurrealist art genre.
  
  ## Biography
  
  Seehafer was born in the United States, the son of a professor of advertising, and grew up primarily in the New England area of the northeast. While pursuing painting and photography independently early in his life, Seehafer started displaying his paintings in the mid 1980s in both Connecticut and the Lower East Side of New York City where he participated in numerous exhibitions. In 1988 he enrolled in Parsons School of Design in New York. Through pursuing his painting, Seehafer initiated the use of mass media based sources in his work which led him to eventually coin the term 'massurrealism' in 1992. His first serious undertaking was a series of paintings of shopping carts which served as catalyst for this concept done in 1989–1990. He exhibited this series in a few venues in Connecticut as well in Boston, Massachusetts.
  
  In 2005 Seehafer left the U.S. to work and live in Berlin (Germany) where he worked as a photographer as well continued his painting and mixed media work. Among them was a digital collage "Untitled 1990" which was based on his cart paintings and studies of the late 1980s and early 1990s. This particular image would be presented in different formats including a photo and mixed media version done in 2014.
  
  There have been various academic papers and treatises on Massurrealism.
  
  