Larry Rivers

Artist

• Born: August 17, 1923
• Birthplace: Bronx, New York
• Died: August 14, 2002
• Place of death: Southampton, New York

A major artist of the New York School, Rivers worked in a variety of media, including painting, drawing, Plexiglas sculpture, welded metal, and mixed-media assemblage. His work in the 1940’s and the 1950’s revitalized the concept of figure painting, and his later work anticipated pop art.

Early Life

Larry Rivers was born to Samuel and Sonya Grossberg on August 17, 1923. His father was an amateur violinist who encouraged his son to study music. Rivers first studied piano, but later he became so proficient as a jazz saxophonist that by age twelve he was playing at New York’s Catskill Mountain resorts. His name was anglicized to Irving Grossberg at seventeen. While still a teenager, Rivers played with various bands, often as leader. According to legend, when a nightclub emcee announced, “The music tonight is supplied by Larry Rivers and His Mudcats,” Rivers formally adopted that name. In 1942, he enlisted in the U.S. Army Air Corps, but he was given a medical discharge because of a neurological condition that caused tremors in his left hand. He returned to civilian life and resumed his music. He studied music at the Juilliard School in 1944 and 1945.

In 1945, the artist Jane Freilicher inspired Rivers to paint, and art began to replace music as the focus of his life. Although he continued to support himself with music, his growing passion for painting drew him to study with Nell Blaine in 1946, with Hans Hofmann in 1947 and 1948, and with William Baziotes at New York University in 1948. At New York University, Rivers received a bachelor’s degree in art education in 1951. His first one-man show was held at the Jane Street Gallery in 1949, and he rapidly became an important figure in the New York arts scene.

Life’s Work

Rivers was a versatile artist who enjoyed shocking viewers with his controversial subjects and his notorious showmanship. He believed his idiosyncratic activities helped to identify and to define his art. He incorporated into his masterful figure paintings of the 1940’s an abstract expressionist sensibility, including bravura brushwork, elegant paint quality, and dynamic movement. Always a risk-taker, Rivers demanded intellectual variety in his work. He might concentrate on visions of the Holocaust, then return to such frivolous topics as his Fashion Show series. His subject matter included family, history, politics, religion, and sensuality. Rivers was recognized for historical themes. Washington Crossing the Delaware was acquired by the Museum of Modern Art in New York City, but it was a casualty of the 1958 fire. The Last Civil War Veteran series was based on magazine photographs. The Dutch Masters and Cigars series of the 1960’s utilized found objects and commonplace images. His mixed-media constructions incorporated airbrush, stencils, projections, and photography.

In 1956, Rivers’s works were included in the Fourth Biennial of the Museum of Modern Art of São Paulo, Brazil, the first of many such honors. He exhibited annually at the Tibor de Nagy Gallery from 1952 to 1962. In 1963, he joined the Marlborough Gallery, where he remained for the rest of his life. His collaborators in art, printmaking, and poetry included poet Frank O’Hara, sculptor Jean Tinguely, poet LeRoi Jones, beat writer Jack Kerouac, poet Allen Ginsberg, and poet Kenneth Koch. In 1965, Rivers’s first comprehensive exhibition toured five U.S. museums: Rose Art Museum, Brandeis University, Pasadena Art Museum, Detroit Institute of Arts, and Minneapolis Institute of Arts. The History of the Russian Revolution was created for the tour’s final exhibit, which was held at the Jewish Museum in Manhattan. The thirty-three-foot, seventy-six-panel piece, often considered to be Rivers’s masterpiece, includes more than seventy components: thirty individual canvases, poetry, transparencies, and a machine gun.

A retrospective of Rivers’s art was held at the Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C., in 2002. He continued to exhibit nationally and internationally, and he created major commissioned works until he died of liver cancer in his home at Southampton, New York, on August 14, 2002.

Significance

Rivers’s breakthrough paintings, Washington Crossing the Delaware and Double Portrait of Berdie, established him as one of America’s most significant postwar artists. He was a remarkable draftsman, combining exquisitely masterful figure paintings with the energy of abstract expressionism. His work was culturally provocative, infused with elements of nostalgia and of humor. He found it necessary to keep an active public image, even appearing on a television game show. He was one of the first mid-century artists to include found objects and popular images in his works. With his dramatic public persona, he helped establish a direction for pop art

Bibliography

Brightman, Carol, and Larry Rivers. Larry Rivers: Drawings and Digressions. New York: C. N. Potter, 1979. In-depth, illustrated consideration of Rivers and his work.

Duyck, John, and Larry Rivers. Larry Rivers Paintings and Drawings 1951-2001. New York: Marlborough Gallery, 2006. Rivers’s life and art, including photographs of his work.

Hunter, Sam. Larry Rivers. New York: Harry N. Abrams, 1969. A contemporary look at the artist’s work, including photographs, biography, bibliography, and list of exhibitions.

Rivers, Larry. “Discussion of the Work of Larry Rivers.” Art News 60 (March, 1961). Rivers comments on his own art and its place in the world.

‗‗‗‗‗‗‗, et al. Larry Rivers: Art and the Artist. New York: Thunder’s Mouth Press, 2002. Chronological stories by and about Rivers, including photographs of the artist and his associates.

Rivers, Larry, and Helen A. Harrison. Larry Rivers. New York: Harper Collins, 1984. A study of Rivers’s life, including photographs of the artist and his art.

Rivers, Larry, and Arnold Weinstein. What Did I Do? The Unauthorized Autobiography of Larry Rivers. New York: Thunder’s Mouth Press, 1992. Memoir revealing Rivers’s opinions about his art, his life, and his world.