Larry Rivers
Larry Rivers was born in the Bronx, as Yitzhok Loiza Grossberg to Russian Jewish parents. 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.
Rivers took up painting in 1945 and studied at the Hans Hofmann School from 1947–48, and then at New York University. 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.
A contemporary painter who, even up to his death at 79, was combining three-dimensional collage work with slick photographic technique in new and exciting ways. Creating work that combined realistically rendered images within a loosely brushed, quasi-abstract background. His primary gallery being the Marlborough Gallery in New York City. His work bridged the gap between early Abstract Expressionists like William De Kooning and Jackson Pollack and the later Pop Art Masters Andy Warhol and Roy Lichtenstein.
Rivers established himself as one of America’s most important postwar artists, Rivers continued, until his death on August 14, 2002. Exhibiting regularly both in the United States and abroad. In 2002 a major retrospective of Rivers’ work was held at the Corcoran Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C.
