Probably a stupid question but, how come in our current time we can make "Hyper realistic" drawings and paintings but there's none(to my knowledge) from the past?

When you say hyperrealism I’m going to assume you mean little h, aka paintings that are extremely realistic and not the movement itself which combines photorealistic elements with narrative. I’m also going to speak purely in terms of paintings and drawings as the raw materials and methods used in hyperrealistic sculptures today (think Evan Penny) would not be available to artists in the past.

Hyperrealistic drawings and paintings play on photographic elements that simply don’t exist in older paintings because they were created before the widespread use of photography. Hyperrealism doesn’t portray an image as we see it but as a camera does, it tends to have more details than we would ordinarily notice, less chiaroscuro, and looks flatter overall. We don’t notice these things because we’re used to seeing photographs; hyperrealism seeks to show us an alternative view of our world rather than the world around us as it looks to the naked eye.

Look at some of Chuck Close’s hyper realistic work in contrast to Gustave Courbet. Both are realistic but Close’s source imagery comes from a photograph. You can see it clearly if you know where to look: individual hairs have been captured, the smoke in motion, a shallow depth of field at play, whereas Courbet’s is much more like what you would see in a mirror. You can see wisps of hair, the outline of tendons in his arm but not the hairs or veins, etc. I think it’s worth pointing out that Courbet was a 19th century Realist and a predecessor to the photorealistic/hyperrealistic movement.

So, to answer your question briefly: it’s the advent of photography that leads to the rise of hyperrealism. The use of photographic elements in paintings is what makes them feel “real” to us but the reality is that these paintings are a depiction of something that exists beyond our reality because they are simply not something we can see without a photograph. So it’s not because artists of the past lacked the talent but it’s because they lacked the tools.

Sorry if the formatting is strange, I’m on mobile.

Chase, Linda. 1975. Hyperrealism. London: Academy Editions

Meisel, Louis K., and Linda Chase. 2002. Photorealism at the millenium. New York: Abrams.

For more information on Realism I think this is a good overview:

Nochlin, Linda. 1990. Realism. London, England: Penguin Books.