Cleve Gray; abstract painter
Hyfler/Rosner
December 10, 2004
Cleve Gray, 86, a Painter of Large Abstract Works, Dies
By KEN JOHNSON NY Times
http://www.clevegray.com/morethrenody%20frame.htm
http://www.clevegray.com/installations%20frame.htm
http://www.rogallery.com/Gray/Gray-orange.htm
http://mattatuckmuseum.org/collections/art/gray.htm
http://www.clevegray.com/newpaper%20frame.htm
Cleve Gray, a painter admired for his large-scale, vividly
colorful and lyrically gestural abstract compositions, died
on Wednesday in Hartford. He was 86.
The cause was a massive subdural hematoma suffered after he
fell on ice and hit his head on Tuesday outside his home in
Warren, Conn., said his wife, the writer Francine du Plessix
Gray.
Mr. Gray achieved his greatest critical recognition in the
late 1960's and 70's after working for many years in a
comparatively conservative late-Cubist style. Inspired in
the 60's by artists like Jackson Pollock, Clyfford Still,
Mark Rothko and Helen Frankenthaler, Mr. Gray began to
produce large paintings using a variety of application
methods - pouring, staining, sponging and other
nontraditional techniques - to create compositions combining
expanses of pure color and spontaneous calligraphic
gestures.
In 1972 and 73 he produced "Threnody," a suite of 14
paintings, each measuring 20 feet by 20 feet, dedicated to
the dead on both sides in the Vietnam War. The series was
commissioned by the Neuberger Museum of Art at Purchase
College, part of the State University of New York, and is
considered one of the largest groups of abstract paintings
created for a specific public space.
Cleve Ginsberg was born in New York on Sept. 22, 1918. (The
family changed its named to Gray in 1936.) He attended the
Ethical Culture School in New York, and completed his
college preparatory studies at Phillips Academy in Andover,
Mass., where he won the Samuel F. B. Morse Prize for most
promising art student. In 1940 he graduated summa cum laude
from Princeton with a degree in art and archaeology. He
wrote his thesis on Chinese landscape painting. Chinese
painting would later become an important influence on his
own painting.
Mr. Gray joined the Army in 1942 and served in Britain,
France and Germany, where he sketched wartime destruction.
After the liberation of Paris he began informal studies with
the French artists André Lhote and Jacques Villon, and he
continued those studies after the war.
He began to exhibit his work at the Galerie Durand-Ruel in
Paris, and he had his first solo exhibition at the Jacques
Seligmann Gallery in New York in 1947, a year after
returning to the United States. Mr. Gray's work is included
in the collections of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the
Museum of Modern Art, the Whitney Museum of American Art and
many other museums. His most recent exhibition of new
paintings was in 2002 at Berry-Hill Galleries in Manhattan.
When he died he was working on pictures for a show scheduled
for this winter at Berry-Hill.
In 1949 Mr. Gray bought the house in Warren that remained
his home for the rest of his life. In 1957 he married
Francine du Plessix, who became well known as a novelist and
essayist.
Mr. Gray also wrote frequently about art. He was a
contributing editor for Art in America magazine and he
edited three volumes of other artists' writings: "David
Smith by David Smith" (1968); "John Marin by John Marin"
(1970) and "Hans Richter by Hans Richter" (1971) (all
published by Holt, Rinehart & Winston).
Mr. Gray is survived by his wife; their sons, Thaddeus, of
Manhattan, and Luke, of Brooklyn; and four grandchildren.