Larry Rivers
Rivers in 1961
Born	Yitzroch Loiza Grossberg (1923-08-17)August 17, 1923 New York City, U.S.
Died	August 14, 2002(2002-08-14) (aged 78) Southampton, New York, U.S.[1]
Education	Hans Hofmann School
Known for	Painting,sculpture
Movement	East Coastfigurative painting,new realism,pop art
Spouses	Augusta Berger ​ ​ (m. 1945; div. 1946)​ [2] Clarice Price ​ ​ (m. 1961; sep. 1967)​

Larry Rivers (bornYitzroch Loiza Grossberg; August 17, 1923 – August 14, 2002) was an American artist, musician, filmmaker, and occasional actor.^[1] Considered by many scholars to be the "Godfather" and "Grandfather" ofPop art, he was one of the first artists to merge non-objective, non-narrative art with narrative and objective abstraction.^[1][3]

Larry Rivers was born as Yitzroch Loiza Grossberg in theBronx, New York, in the family of Jewish immigrants from Ukraine.^[4] Rivers took up painting in 1945 and studied at theHans Hofmann School from 1947 through 1948.^[5] He earned a BA in art education fromNew York University in 1951.^[5]

His work was quickly acquired by theMuseum of Modern Art. A 1953 paintingWashington Crossing the Delaware was damaged in fire at the museum five years later.^[6]

He was apop artist of theNew 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 theTerrain Gallery in 1955.

He has been contextualised as working out of theAbstract expressionist legacy ofWillem de Kooning, "adapting the freedom of the Abstract Expressionist technique towards figurative ends."^[7]

During the early 1960s Rivers lived inManhattan'sHotel Chelsea, notable for its artistic residents such asBob Dylan,Janis Joplin,Leonard Cohen,Arthur C. Clarke,Dylan Thomas,Sid Vicious and multiple people associated withAndy Warhol's Factory and where he brought several of his Frenchnouveau réalistes friends likeYves Klein who wrote there in April 1961 hisManifeste de l'hôtel Chelsea,Arman,Martial Raysse,Jean Tinguely,Niki de Saint-Phalle,Christo,Daniel Spoerri orAlain 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.^{[citation needed]}

His final work for the exhibition wasThe History of theRussian Revolution, which was later on extended permanent display at theHirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden inWashington, DC. He spent 1967 in London collaborating with the American painterHoward Kanovitz.^{[citation needed]}

In 1967, Rivers traveled to Africa for a second time withPierre Dominique Gaisseau to finish their documentaryAfrica and I, which was a part of the groundbreakingNBC seriesExperiments in Television. During this trip they narrowly escaped execution as suspected mercenaries.^[7]

During the 1970s, Rivers worked closely with Diana Molinari andMichel Auder on many video tape projects, including the infamousTits, and also worked inneon.^[8]

Rivers's legs appeared inJohn Lennon andYoko Ono's 1971 filmUp Your Legs Forever.^[9]

In 1971, he curatedSome American History at the Institute for the Arts atRice University in Houston, where his own work was exhibited alongside that of African-American artistsEllsworth Ausby,Peter Bradley,Frank Bowling,Daniel LaRue Johnson,Joe Overstreet, andWilliam T. Williams.^[10] The exhibition, which intended to focus on violence against African-Americans, was widely criticized by national press along with the black artists whose work was shown, many of whom felt that Rivers' curation focused on his own experiences as a non-black person instead of uplifting and highlighting the perspectives of the black artists who had experienced the racism the show was supposed to foreground.^[11][12][13]

Between 1940 and 1945, he worked as a jazz saxophonist inNew York City; he changed his name to Larry Rivers in 1940 after being introduced as "Larry Rivers and the Mudcats".^[14] He studied at theJuilliard School of Music in 1945–46, along withMiles Davis, with whom he remained friends until Davis's death in 1991.^{[citation needed]}

Larry Rivers was born in the Bronx to Samuel and Sonya Grossberg, Jewish immigrants from Ukraine.^[5] He changed his name to Rivers in 1940 at the start of his career as jazz saxophonist.^[7]

In 1945, he married Augusta Berger, and they had one son, Steven.^[1] Rivers also adopted Joseph, Berger's son from a previous relationship, and reared both children after the couple divorced.^[1] He lived with his mother-in-law, Berdie Burger, who was a favorite model of his, in Southampton, Long Island, from 1953 through 1957.^[7]

In 1961, he married Clarice Price, a Welsh school teacher, who cared for his two sons.^[14] The couple had two daughters together, Gwynne and Emma, but the relationship lasted only six years before Larry and Clarice separated.^[14][15]

Shortly after, he lived and collaborated with Diana Molinari, who featured in many of his works of the 1970s.^{[citation needed]}

Rivers then lived with Sheila Lanham, a Baltimore artist and poet.^{[citation needed]}

In the early 1980s, Rivers and East Village figurative painter Daria Deshuk (1956–2017) lived together and, in 1985, they produced a son, Sam Deshuk Rivers. They remained good friends until Rivers's death.^[16]

Rivers also maintained a relationship with poetFrank O'Hara in the late 1950s and delivered the eulogy at O'Hara's funeral, in 1966.^[17][18]

Throughout his career, the artist maintained studios inNew York City;Southampton, Long Island; andZihuatanejo, Mexico.^{[citation needed]}

Rivers died in 2002, leaving behind his five children and then companion, poet Jeni Olin.^[15]

His primary gallery was the Marlborough Gallery in New York City. In 2002, a major retrospective of Rivers's work was held at theCorcoran Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C.New York University bought correspondences and other documents from theLarry Rivers Foundation to house in their archive.^[19] However, his daughters Gwynne and Emma objected to one particular film being displayed, as it depicts them naked as children and adolescents. The film's purpose is supposedly the documentation of their growth throughpuberty, but it was made when they were not consenting adults.^[15] The matter was addressed in the December 2010 issue of the magazineVanity Fair,^[15] and the October 2010 issue ofGrazia.^{[citation needed]} The film will never be publicly displayed as requested by both children.^{[citation needed]}

• Bodley Gallery
• LGBT culture in New York City
• List of LGBT people from New York City

• Baskind, Samantha,Jewish Artists and the Bible in Twentieth-Century America,Philadelphia, PA, Penn State University Press, 2014,ISBN 978-0-271-05983-9
• Marika Herskovic,New York School Abstract Expressionists Artists Choice by Artists, (New York School Press, 2000.)ISBN 0-9677994-0-6. p. 8; p. 32; p. 38; p. 310–313

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