Artist paints nudes of NHL icons

NEW YORK, Nov. 29 (UPI) -- Kurt Kauper's 7 1/2-foot-tall oil painting of Boston Bruins icon Bobby Orr is unique -- it shows the NHL Hall-of-Famer in the altogether.

Orr didn't pose for the painting. He didn't know it existed until recently, The Boston Globe reported Thursday.

Then there is the painting of former Bruins center Derek Sanderson, who is painted standing next to his locker with nothing more than his hockey stick.

"Hey, you know, he has poetic license, he can pretty much bloody well do what he bloody pleases," said Sanderson, now a 61-year-old investment manager for Boston's Howland Capital Management, who, like Orr, did not pose for his portrait. "I just hope he's a good artist."

Kauper, whose works have been shown widely, is known as a masterful painter who creates realistic portraits of subjects he has never met, the newspaper reported.

Seven of the eight paintings in his New York show, which runs through Dec. 15, have sold for between $50,000 and $135,000.