Everything about Larry Rivers totally explained
Larry Rivers (
August 17,
1923 -
August 14 2002) was a
Jewish American artist, musician, filmmaker and occasional actor. Rivers resided and maintained studios in
New York City,
Southampton, New York on (
Long Island) and
Zihuatanejo,
Mexico.==Biography==
Larry Rivers was born in the
Bronx, New York as Yitzrok Loiza Grossberg. He changed his name to Larry Rivers in 1940, after being introduced as "Larry Rivers and the Mudcats" at a local New York City pub. From 1940-45 he worked as a jazz saxophonist in
New York City, and he studied at the
Juilliard School of Music in 1945-46, along with
Miles Davis, with whom he remained friends until Davis's death in 1991.
Rivers is considered by many scholars a "Grandfather" of
Pop art, because he was one of the first artists to really merge non-objective, non-narrative art with narrative and objective abstraction.
Rivers took up painting in 1945 and studied at the
Hans Hofmann School from 1947-48, and then at
New York University. He was a
pop artist of the
New York School, reproducing everyday objects of American popular culture as art.
In 1951, he graduated in art from New York University and met
Jackson Pollock. His works were subsequently shown by John Myers. Rivers continued to show annually with Meyers at the Tibor de Nagy Gallery for 10 years. In 1952 he designed the stage set for
Frank O'Hara's play "Try! Try!". In 1953, Rivers moved to
Southampton, New York on Long Island, and began to make outdoor sculpture. That same year he also created some of his first prints and paintings with historical themes, such as his well-known version of
Washington Crossing the Delaware, Museum of Modern Art, New York), after the famous work by
Emanuel Leutze. In 1954 he'd his first exhibition of sculptures at the Stable Gallery, New York. In 1956 he began a series of large-format paintings and was included with ten other American artists in the IV Bienal Do Museu de Arte Moderna de
São Paulo, Brazil. In 1958 he spent a month in
Paris and played in various jazz bands. He also collaborated with the poet
Kenneth Koch on the collection of picture-poems New York 1959-1960.
Larry Rivers appeared in several films over the years, including the
1959 short film,
Pull My Daisy,
Round Trip in (1967),
The Queen in (1968),
Lovesick (1983), and
Pie in the Sky: The Brigid Berlin Story in (2000).
In 1963, he joined the Marlborough Gallery where he showed until his death. He also showed at other prominent venues. In 1955,
The Museum of Modern Art acquired his painting,
Washington Crossing the Delaware (although
MoMA, hasn't reinstalled the painting in the new installation of the gallery). In 1956, the
Whitney Museum of American Art purchased
Double Portrait of Berdie, which on occasion hangs prominently in the museum.
He was close friends with the poet and curator
Frank O'Hara with whom he collaborated on an article titled
How To Make a Painting for the
Evergreen Review.
His close friendship with many of the
New York School of painters and poets produced many collaborations over the years, including those with
Allen Ginsberg,
Kenneth Koch, and
Terry Southern.
During the early 1960s Rivers lived in the infamous
Hotel Chelsea. In 1965 he'd his first comprehensive retrospective in five important American museums. His final work for the exhibition was
The History of the Russian Revolution, which was later on extended permanent display at the
Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden in
Washington, DC. During 1967 he was in London collaborating with the American painter Howard Kanovitz.
In 1968, Rivers travelled to Africa for a second time with
Pierre Dominique Gaisseau to finish their documentary,
Africa and I, they narrowly escaped execution as suspected mercenaries.
During the 1970's he worked closely with Diana Molinari and
Michel Auder on many video tape projects, including the infamous
Tits, and also worked witn
neon.
Established as one of America's most important postwar artists, Rivers continued, until his death on 14 August 2002, to exhibit regularly both in the United States and abroad and to create work that combined realistically rendered images within a loosely brushed, quasi-abstract background. His primary gallery being the Marlborough Gallery in New York City. In 2002 a major retrospective of Rivers' work was held at the
Corcoran Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C.
Rivers married Augusta Berger in 1945, and they'd one son, Steven, as well as an earlier adopted child, Joseph. The couple divorced. He married Clarice Price in 1961, a Welsh school teacher who cared for his 2 sons. Rivers and Clarice Price had two daughters, Gwynne and Emma (Emma is an artist who lives in NY). After 6 years, they separated. Shortly after, he lived and collaborated with Diana Molinari, who featured in many of his works of the 1970's. After that Rivers lived with Sheila Lanham, a Baltimore poet. In the early 1980s, Rivers and East Village figurative painter, Daria Deshuk lived together and in 1985 they'd a son, Sam Deshuk Rivers. At the time of his death in 2002, Jeni Olin, a poet, was his companion.
Further Information
Get more info on 'Larry Rivers'.
|
External Link Exchanges
Do you know how hard it is to get a link from a large encyclopaedia? Well we're different and will prove it. To get a link from us just add the following HTML to your site on a relevant page:
<a href="http://larry_rivers.totallyexplained.com">Larry Rivers Totally Explained</a>
Then simply click through this link from your web page. Our crawlers will verify your link, extract the title of your web page and instantly add a link back to it. If you like you can remove the words Totally Explained and embed the link in article text.
As long as your link remains in place, we'll keep our link to you right here. Please play fair - our crawlers are watching. Your site must be closely related to this one's topic. Any kind of spamming, dubious practises or removing the link will result in your link from us being dropped and, potentially, your whole site being banned. |
