Biography
Larry Rivers (*1923 New York City USA | †2002 New York City USA) was an American artist, filmmaker, musician and occasional actor and is considered as the precursor of pop art. He was the first to merge non-objective, non-narrative art with narrative and objective abstraction.
Rivers was born as Yitzroch Loiza Grossberg, New York as a son of Jewish immigrants from Ukraine. In 1940 he first began a carrier as a saxophonist in New York City and studied music until 1945. It was during that time when he changed his name to Larry Rivers. His interest in painting started in 1945, when he began at the Hans Hofmann School from 1947-48 and he earned his BA in Art Education from New York University in 1951.
Rivers is most strongly associated with the New York School, a radical post-war art movement of 1950s and 1960s America also known as Abstract Expressionism. The school centred around Frank O’Hara who was a very close friend of Rivers, and included mediums beyond fine art such as theatre, dance and music. In the 1960s & 1970s Rivers moved to Hotel Chelsea, whose other notable residents included Bob Dylan, Janis Joplin, Leonard Cohen amoung others, and frequented Andy Warhol’s factory. Warhol made it no secret that he was influenced by Rivers, saying, ‘Larry’s painting style was unique – it wasn’t Abstract Expressionism and it wasn’t Pop, it fell into the period in between. But his personality was very Pop.’
In 1968 Rivers travelled to Africa with Pierre Gaisseau where they created their documentary Africa and I. Rivers continued to work with videotape, producing Some American History for the De Menil Foundation.
Throughout the 1980s and 1990s, River’s works formed the basis for a number of retrospectives and large scale exhibitions. In 2002, while working on another exhibition, ‘Fashion Show’ at Marlborough Gallery, Monte Carlo, River’s passed away at the age of 78. His works can be found in the collections of The Museum of Modern Art, New York; The Metropolitan Museum, New York; and the Chrysler Museum, Norfolk; among others.