Log in / create account
What's your thing?
 
Search

Endpoint: Larry Rivers (Artist)



01:03
Videos (11)
created on: 29/08/2025
by: bob (10160)
 
 

Person properties

General info :
Larry Rivers (born Yitzroch Loiza Grossberg; August 17, 1923, New York City, U.S. – died August 14, 2002, Southampton, New York, U.S. (aged 78)) was an American painter, musician, filmmaker, and occasional actor.
Considered by many scholars to be the "Godfather" and "Grandfather" of Pop art, he was one of the first artists to merge non-objective, non-narrative art with narrative and objective abstraction.

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 Manhattan's 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, like Rivers, left 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.

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. He spent 1967 in London collaborating with the American painter Howard Kanovitz.

Between 1940 and 1945, he worked as a jazz saxophonist in New York City; he changed his name to Larry Rivers in 1940 after being introduced as "Larry Rivers and the Mudcats". 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.

Larry Rivers was born in the Bronx to Samuel and Sonya Grossberg, Jewish immigrants from Ukraine. He changed his name to Rivers in 1940 at the start of his career as jazz saxophonist.

In 1945, he married Augusta Berger, and they had one son, Steven. Rivers also adopted Joseph, Berger's son from a previous relationship, and reared both children after the couple divorced. He lived with his mother-in-law, Berdie Burger, who was a favorite model of his, in Southampton, Long Island, from 1953 through 1957.

In 1961, he married Clarice Price, a Welsh school teacher, who cared for his two sons. The couple had two daughters together, Gwynne and Emma, but the relationship lasted only six years before Larry and Clarice separated.

Shortly after, he lived and collaborated with Diana Molinari, who featured in many of his works of the 1970s.

Rivers then lived with Sheila Lanham, a Baltimore artist and poet.

In the early 1980s, Rivers and East Village figurative painter Daria Deshuk (1956–2017) lived together and, in 1985, they had a son, Sam Deshuk Rivers. They remained good friends until Rivers's death.

Rivers also maintained a relationship with poet Frank O'Hara in the late 1950s and delivered the eulogy at O'Hara's funeral, in 1966.

Throughout his career, the artist maintained studios in New York City; Southampton, Long Island; and Zihuatanejo, Mexico.

Rivers died in 2002, leaving behind his five children and then companion, poet Jeni Olin.
Websites
Source :
Copied Wikipedia parts under license :
ENA's

Magazines

(1 items)

Item number : 70596

Submitted by : bob (10160)
on : 29/08/2025