Larry Rivers
| Larry Rivers | |
|---|---|
 |
|
| Born |
Yitzroch Loiza Grossberg August 17, 1923 Bronx, New York |
| Died | August 14, 2002 (aged 78) |
| Nationality | American |
| Education | Hans Hofmann School |
| Known for | Painting, sculpture |
| Movement | East Coast figurative painting, new realism, pop art |
Larry Rivers (August 17, 1923 – August 14, 2002) was an American artist, musician, filmmaker and occasional actor. Rivers resided and maintained studios in New York City, Southampton, Long Island, and Zihuatanejo, Mexico.
Larry Rivers was born in the Bronx, as Yitzroch Loiza Grossberg to Samuel and Sonya Grossberg, Jewish immigrants from the Ukraine. 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 to be the "Godfather" and "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. He earned a BA in art education from New York University in 1951. He was a pop artist of the New York School, reproducing everyday objects of American popular culture as art. He was one of eleven New York artists featured in the opening exhibition at the Terrain Gallery in 1955. During the early 1960s Rivers lived in the Hotel Chelsea, notable for its artistic residents such as Bob Dylan, Janis Joplin, Leonard Cohen, Arthur C. Clarke, Dylan Thomas, Sid Vicious and multiple people associated with Andy Warhol's Factory and where he brought several of his French nouveau réalistes friends like Yves Klein who wrote there in April 1961 his Manifeste de l'hôtel Chelsea, Arman, Martial Raysse, Jean Tinguely, Niki de Saint-Phalle, Christo, Daniel Spoerri or Alain Jacquet, several of whom left, like him, some pieces of art in the lobby of the hotel : for payment of their rooms. In 1965 Rivers had his first comprehensive retrospective in five important American museums.
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