Harvey Quaytman, Painter Known for Geometric Works, 64

[DGH]

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Harvey Quaytman, an abstract painter, died last Monday in Manhattan, New
York, at the age of 64, from cancer. His painting combined austere
geometry and a quietly hedonistic sensuality of surface and color. His
spare, layered compositions of gridded, hard-edged bands or centered
crosses, often on shaped canvases, were realized in subdued yet lush
hues. Velvety blacks and grays and rich blues would be accented by
strips of bright red or by rust, a signature ingredient.

Emerging in the 1960's, he responded to Minimalism and formalist
abstraction by producing sleek hybrids of painting and sculpture. In the
1970's he began to focus on extending traditions of reductive abstract
painting that began with early Modernist works of artists like Kasimir
Malevich and Piet Mondrian.

A Modernist to the end, Mr. Quaytman concentrated on the formal
properties of painting. Although the cruciform structure that he favored
from 1985 on could invite symbolic speculation, it remained for him a
device for concentrating attention on the immediate experience of shape,
texture, color and composition.

Born in 1937 in Far Rockaway, Queens, Mr. Quaytman began his college
studies at Syracuse University in 1955. In 1959 he received a bachelor's
degree in fine arts from the Boston Museum School and Tufts University.
After his first solo exhibition in London in 1962, he had more than 60
one-man exhibitions in the United States, Europe and Australia. His
works are included in the collections of the Tate Gallery in London; the
Corcoran Gallery of Art in Washington; the Fogg Art Museum in Cambridge,
Mass.; and the Museum of Modern Art and Whitney Museum of American Art
in New York.

Among the honors Mr. Quaytman received were two Guggenheim fellowships
(1979 and 1985); an artist's fellowship from the National Endowment for
the Arts (1983); the Elizabeth Foundation Prize for Painting (1994); and
an Academy Award in Art from the American Academy of Arts and Letters
(1997).

http://www.nytimes.com/2002/04/15/obituaries/15QUAY.html

[Hyfler/Rosner]

Harvey Quaytman, Painter Known for Geometric Works, Dies at 64
By KEN JOHNSON

(NYtimes)

Harvey Quaytman, an abstract painter, died last Monday in Manhattan. He was
64.

The cause was cancer, said his art dealer, David McKee.

Mr. Quaytman's painting combined austere geometry and a quietly hedonistic

Mr. Quaytman is survived by his wife, Margaret Moorman, an art critic and
writer who lives in New York; two daughters, Emma and Rebecca Quaytman, both
of New York; and a grandchild.