(1923 New York 2002)

Graph Camel. 1978.

Acrylic and pencil on canvas.

91.5 x 91 cm.

Provenance:
- Marlborough Gallery, New York (verso with the label).
- Private collection Switzerland.
- Purchased from the above by the present owner, since then private collection Switzerland.

Exhibition: Indianapolis 1980, Painting and sculpture today 1980: Indianapolis Museum of Art, 24 June - 17 August 1980, cat. no. 83 (verso with the label).

“Larry’s painting style was unique – it wasn’t Abstract Expressionism and it wasn’t Pop, it fell into the period in between. But his personality was very Pop.” (Andy Warhol)

The American Pop Art pioneer and all-round artist Larry Rivers was born in the Bronx, New York in 1923. The son of a Ukrainian immigrant, he was named Yitzroch Loiza Grossberg. As a teenager he immersed himself fully in the New York Jazz-Scene and took on his artistic name of Larry Rivers. He was very musical, played the saxophone and studied music at the Juilliard School. In 1945, after a brief spell in the army during the Second World War, he discovered an interest in painting, whereupon he studied at the renowned Hans Hofmann School from 1947 until 1948, as well as New York University from 1949 until 1951. From early on, Rivers identified with Abstract Expressionism, yet from the late 1940s he began with figurative painting and developed his own style, by drawing objects with light and flowing brush strokes. From the 1950s he was also involved with sculpture, and made works in metal, cement and gesso.

His innovative visions and works influenced subsequent generations, in that he drew attention to untapped themes. Larry Rivers is one of the precursors of Pop Art. Only when a famous image had been reproduced a million times through advertising and a subject turned bland, ultimately transforming the original one-off piece into a consumable emblem, would it then attract the attention of Larry Rivers. His motifs were for example French banknotes, playing cards, popular highlights of American history, variations on a theme, which were inspired by those of Rembrandt, Jacques-Louis David, Edouard Manet, Paul Cézanne etc. His pictures consist of the typical motifs of Pop Art, but he deals with them in a different way to his artist contemporaries. Larry Rivers avoided the concentration on the Pure Line, the pure unmixed colour surfaces or the isolation of a movement.

As in the present work from 1978, his pictures have something of the sketch about them and are composite motifs, with an unmistakably original style and a tonality in the relationship of the colours, which provide the structure to his compositions. His subjects stand out from the picture surface as in a relief, which is where the essence of his art is to be found. Rivers worked on a large number of preparatory works before he realised each large piece. This informs his system and also explains how many a complex composition has arisen. However, Larry Rivers emphasised that the use of the “Camel” cigarette packaging, the bank notes, or the comic book figures, did not necessarily mean that he liked these motifs, or that by using these mass-produced motifs he was delivering a social critique.

“With a real Pop artist, the style and the subject come together, wrote Robert Rosenblut, which means he depicts mass-produced images and products, using a style which equally relies on the visual vocabulary of mass production. If that is so, and that is so, then the painting of Larry Rivers has a lot to do with Pop Art, as in Rembrandt with the cigar case.“ (Helmut Schneider: Rembrandt auf der Zigarrenkiste, zurückverwandelt in Kunst. From: Haenlein, Carl: Larry Rivers : Retrospektive: Bilder und Skulpturen. Kestner-Gesellschaft, Hannover, 1980 p. 115)