Robert Richenburg, Artist of Abstract Expressionist Works, 89
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By RANDY KENNEDY, NY Times
Published: October 13, 2006
Robert Richenburg, an Abstract Expressionist painter whose early works
were shown alongside those of Jackson Pollock and Willem de Kooning,
died on Tuesday at his home in East Hampton, N.Y. He was 89.
After serving in World War II as an explosives driver, Mr. Richenburg
studied in New York with Hans Hofmann and took part in the downtown
painting scene. He was a member of the Club, the influential group of
abstract painters that included Barnett Newman, Joan Mitchell and
Robert Motherwell. In 1951 he was invited to be part of the Ninth
Street Show, the exhibition that helped to establish the New York
School, organized by the Club and supervised by the dealer Leo
Castelli.
Mr. Richenburg was praised by critics and sought after by collectors,
and was particularly known for ominous paintings in which fields of
black were punctuated by bursts of color and line. "This painting
must symbolize the most terrifying aspects of metropolitan life," a
critic wrote about one work in a 1959 solo show at the Tibor de Nagy
Gallery.
Mr. Richenburg supported himself teaching at Pratt Institute in
Brooklyn. But he resigned in 1964 after a dispute with the school's
administration, which disagreed with his support for a student who was
making assemblages of found objects like tinfoil and rags. Mr.
Richenburg took a job at Cornell University and moved upstate with his
wife and son to Ithaca, where he found it difficult to tend to his New
York art career.
His wife later died. He is survived by his second wife, Margaret Kerr;
his son, Ron; and his stepchildren, Blake Kerr, Gary Kerr and Meg Kerr.
Mr. Richenburg never stopped painting. When he was in his 70's, his
work began to be noticed again after being championed by Bonnie Grad,
an art professor at Clark University in Worcester, Mass., who saw some
of his paintings in the 1980's and helped organized new exhibitions.
A 60-year retrospective of Mr. Richenburg's works is currently on
view at the Sidney Mishkin Gallery at Baruch College in Manhattan.