This biography from the Archives of AskART:
|  A post-Abstract Expressionist, Larry Rivers was one of the first artists to rebel against the pure abstraction and inject recognizable figurative subjects into his painting. He established a middle ground between abstraction and realism and combined blurred images with precise lines.
He was born in New York City, and after studying music at the Julliard School, he became a painter. From 1947 to 1948, he studied with Hans Hofmann and William Baziotes and was very much a part of the leading-edge New York scene. He also designed stage sets including for plays by Frank O'Hara and in 1957 began making welded steel sculpture. His studio has been in New York City.
Source: Matthew Baigell, "Dictionary of American Art"
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Figurative artist Larry Rivers was born in the Bronx in 1923 to Ukrainian Jewish parents and was named Yitzak Loiza Grossberg. Rivers belonged to the second generation of the New York School, though unlike most of his contemporaries he stayed away from abstraction instead preferring narrative paintings. He began his artistic career playing the jazz saxophone and when one night his group was introduced as "Larry Rivers and the Mudcats," he decided to keep the name.
After a brief period in the army during World War II, Rivers attended Julliard School of Music for one year before returning to the jazz saxophone. After he met the painter Jane Freilicher, he decided to devote himself to painting. Rivers attended Hans Hofmann's school for nearly two years. In 1949 he had his first solo show at the Jane Street Gallery, an artist's co-op in the Village. Rivers received favorable reviews and was invited to join the Tibor de Nagy Gallery uptown.
Rivers continued to show annually at the Tibor de Nagy Gallery from 1952 to 1962. In 1963, he joined the Marlborough Gallery where he stayed until his death. In 1955, The Modern acquired his painting "Washington Crossing the Delaware" and in 1956 the Whitney Museum purchased "Double Portrait of Berdie", two of his more famous paintings. He had periodic museum shows in Europe and the United States throughout his career.
Rivers had two sons, Joseph and Steven, by his first wife, Augusta. In 1961 he married Clarice Price and had two more children, Gwynne and Emma. In the 1970s he had another son with the painter Daria Deshuk
The subjects of River's figurative paintings were family, history, politics, religion and sex. His work done in oils often included the use of stencils, cutouts, blank canvas and image reversals. He often painted family members including his mother in law, his sons and his ex-wife. Rivers favored historical subjects such as "History of Matzoh: The Story of the Jews (1984-85)," "History of the Russian Revolution (1965)" and often painted parodies including his "Washington Crossing the Delaware." Rivers enjoyed controversial subjects and shocking the public. "Lapman Loves It" (1966) is a nine foot electrified assemblage complete with strategically located light bulbs. "French Vocabulary Lesson (1961-62)" is a nude with body parts labeled in French.
Rivers was also a writer. In 1979 he published "Drawings and Digressions" with Carol Brightman. In 1992 he published "What Did I Do? The Unauthorized Autobiography" with Arnold Weinstein.
Rivers died on August 14, 2002 of liver cancer in his home in Southampton, New York.
Source: Art in America, October 2002
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Larry Rivers was born Yitzak Loiza Grossberg in the Bronx, New York City on August 17, 1923. He was the son of Ukrainian immigrants, Samuel and Sonya Grossberg. He began playing the piano as a child, then switched to the saxophone; as a teenager his musical career began by playing in jazz bands. His name was changed when a nightclub comedian introduced his group as "Larry Rivers and his Mudcats." In 1944, after supporting himself for several years as a musician, and doing a stint in the U.S. Army Air Corps, he enrolled at the Julliard School to study composition.
About the same time he met painter Jane Freilicher who introduced him to the world of visual art. Rivers continued to support himself as a musician, but began studying painting with Hans Hofmann in 1947. With funding from the GI Bill he enrolled in the Fine Arts program at New York University where he worked with William Baziotes. He earned a Bachelor's degree in art education in 1951, but didn't become a teacher as he had planned.
Instead he developed a career that focused on painting but included music, stage design, acting, filmmaking and writing poetry and prose. He was a facile draftsman whose art work formed a connection between the Abstract Expressionism of the 1940s and 1950s and Pop Art in the 1960s. He was fascinated by great painting and among his most noted paintings were his personal renditions of some of the world's classics: Leutze's "Washington Crossing the Delaware", "Dutch Masters", (a revision of Rembrandt's The Syndics of the Drapers Guild), "I Like Olympia in Blackface" from Manet. The subjects of his figurative paintings were family, history, politics and sex. His oil paintings included the use of stencils, cutouts, blank canvas and image reversals and he often painted family members.
Rivers was married to Augusta Burger in late 1945; they had two boys, Joseph who was her son from a previous marriage, and Steven. In 1961 he married Clarice Price; they had two daughters, Gwynne and Emma. In the 1970s he had another son, Sam, with the painter Daria Deshuk. He died on August 14, 2002 of liver cancer in his home in Southampton, New York.
Written and submitted by Jean Ershler Schatz, artist and researcher from Laguna Woods, California.
Sources:
From the Internet, www.AskART.com
Larry Rivers; Bad-Boy Pioneer of Pop Art, Obituary by Suzanne Muchnic in LA Times, August 17, 2002
Article by Ferdinand Protzman in ARTnews, Summer 2002
Not Conventionally Unconventional by David C. Levy in ARTnews, October 2002
From the Internet, www.artnet.com
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Biography from MB Fine Art, LLC:
| Born in 1923 in the Bronx, New York, as Larry Grossberg. In 1940 he began a musical career as a jazz saxophonist and changed his name to Larry Rivers. In 1943 he was declared medically unfit for military service. Until 1945 he worked as a saxophonist in various jazz bands in the New York area. In 1944-45 he studied theory of music and composition at the Juilliard School of Music, New York. His first encounter with fine art was through a musical motif based on a painting by Georges Braque.
He began painting in 1945.In 1947-48 he studied at the Hans Hofmann School. In 1948 he studied under William Baziotes at New York University and met Willem de Kooning. In 1949 he had his first one-man exhibition at the Jane Street Gallery, New York. In 1951 he graduated in art from New York University and met Jackson Pollock. His works were subsequently shown by John Myers until 1963.
In 1952 he designed the stage set for Frank O'Hara's play "Try! Try!". In 1953 he completed "Washington Crossing the Delaware". In 1954 he had 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.
In 1961 he married Clarice Price, an art and music teacher of Welsh extraction.In 1965 he had his first comprehensive retrospective in five important American museums. His final work for the exhibition was The History of the Russian Revolution. Until 1967 he was in London collaborating with Howard Kanovitz. In 1967 he became separated from his wife Clarice. He travelled in Central Africa and made the TV-documentary Africa and I with Pierre Gaisseau. In 1969 he began to use spray cans, in 1970 the air brush, and later, video tapes. In 1972 he taught at the University of California in Santa Barbara. In 1973 he had exhibitions in Brussels and New York. In 1974 he finished his Japan series. He was represented at the documenta "6", Kassel, in 1977. In 1978 he began his Golden Oldies Series, revising his own works of the fifties and sixties. In 1980-81 he was given his first European retrospective at Hanover, Munich and Berlin. |
Biography from Rogallery.com:
| Painter and sculptor Larry Rivers was born in New York City in 1923. In the 1950s, he became one of the first artists to explore the figurative style which follows abstract expressionism.
With the use of illustrative material from advertising and familiar paintings, Rivers produced works that have a broader public appeal than those of pure abstraction. His landscapes, portraits and figure studies of the early 1950s were considered reactionary by contemporary critics because of their realistic drawings and structure.
Rivers's art training began in the 1940s, after he turned away from a career as a jazz saxophonist. From 1947 to 1948, he studied at New York University with Hans Hoffman and William Baziotes. He then toured England, France and Italy. Upon his return, he became an integral part of the New York City art scene, designing sets for a Frank O'Hara play in 1954, and for Igor Stravinsky's Oedipous Rex in 1966.
While Rivers's style strikes a balance between abstract expressionism and realistic renderings, his work retains the influence of Hoffman in its free, painterly brushwork. Tightly drawn images float ambiguously in space with blurred images and smears. These blurred, smudgy images were not accidental, but part of a deliberate process. About them, Rivers once said, "I have had a bad arm and am not interested in the art of holding up mirrors."
Areas of canvas sometimes remain bare and devoid of color. Rivers's use of these bare areas has been compared with Cezanne's watercolor technique. The intentionally unfinished areas emphasize the process of painting.
While Rivers's paintings can be interpreted as a comment on the politics of the current art scene, they also represent personal experimentation with new forms. Washington Crossing the Delaware (1953, Museum of Modern Art) represents an attempt by Rivers to shock artists into reacting in new ways.
Double Portrait of Birdie (1955, Whitney Museum of American Art) represents another variation in the central conflict of his work--the contrast between representational drawing and abstractionism. Here, Rivers offers the same figure in two different poses in one painting.
Rivers began sculpting in 1953, and has produced life-size outdoor figures in welded metal, with subsequent works in plexiglass and wood.
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