Portrait of Berdie, Number II

Larry Rivers American

Not on view

Rivers was heralded by Clement Greenberg as an “amazing beginner. . . a better composer of pictures than was Bonnard himself. . .” at his first showing at Jane Street Gallery in New York in 1949. As this portrait of his mother-in-law, Berdie Burger, shows, he remained under the thrall of French painters like Pierre Bonnard and Édouard Vuillard. A student of Hans Hofmann and William Baziotes, Rivers was retrospectively cast by critics in the 1960s as a Pop artist. The characterization did not quite fit, since he never painted in the pseudo-mechanical style of Andy Warhol or Roy Lichtenstein.

Portrait of Berdie, Number II, Larry Rivers (American, Bronx, New York 1923–2002 Southampton, New York), Oil on canvas

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