Rivers, Larry

Rivers, Larry (1923–2002). American painter, sculptor, graphic artist, and designer, born in New York. He is regarded as one of the leading figures in the revival of figurative art that was one aspect of the reaction against the dominance of Abstract Expressionism. After serving in the US Army Air Corps, 1942–3, he earned his living for several years as a jazz saxophonist. He began painting in 1945, studying at the Hans Hofmann School, 1947–8, and at New York University under Baziotes, 1948. His work of the early and mid-1950s continued the vigorous painterly handling associated with Abstract Expressionism, but was very different in character. Some of his paintings were fairly straightforwardly naturalistic, such as the powerful and frank nude study of his mother-in-law, Double Portrait of Berdie (Whitney Museum, New York, 1955), but others looked forward to Pop art in their quotations from well-known advertising or artistic sources, their use of lettering, and their deadpan humour. An example is Washington Crossing the Delaware (MOMA, New York, 1953), based on the famous painting by the 19th-century German-American painter Emanuel Gottlieb Leutze, one of the icons of American history. In the late 1950s and 1960s his work came more clearly within the orbit of Pop, sometimes incorporating cut-out cardboard or wooden forms, electric lights, and so on, but his sensuous handling of paint set him apart from other American Pop artists. Rivers has also made sculpture, collages, and prints, designed for the stage, acted, and written poetry.