Larry Rivers

Larry Rivers – A jazz musician becomes art student with Hans Hofmann and William Baziotes

Larry Rivers was born Yitzhok Loiza Grossberg on 17 August 1923 in New York. The son of Jewish immigrants from Ukraine, he spent his childhood in the Bronx and discovered his love for music at an early age. He worked as a jazz saxophonist from 1940 to 1945, and after performing as Larry Rivers and the Mudcats, he decided to continue using that name as an artist. He began studying at the Juilliard School of Music in 1945 and met the jazz trumpet player Miles Davis, who remained a close friend until Davis’ death in 1991. At around the same time, Larry Rivers also discovered his inclination to painting and so from 1947 attended the influential art school of the painter Hans Hofmann, who had emigrated from Germany. He finally earned his bachelor’s degree in art education in 1951 with William Baziotes at New York University. 

An Abstract Expressionist with preference for representational art

Larry Rivers discovered his interest in the fine arts under the influence of Cubism but leaned towards Abstract Expressionism early on in his career which, like many other New York artists, greatly fascinated him. In 1955, he was one of eleven artists selected to participate in the grand opening exhibition of the Terrain Gallery. Despite his proximity to Abstract Expressionism, Rivers developed a preference for figural representation, which he retained for the majority of his works. He sometimes took motifs from well-known paintings including Olympia by Édouard Manet, Washington Crossing the Delaware by Emanuel Leutze, or works by Paul Cézanne, Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres and Rembrandt van Rijn. Rivers also increasingly became interested in three-dimensional art and created sculptures out of plaster and metal. The unmistakeable roots of Rivers’ work are those which entered history only a short time later as Pop Art: He composed assemblages from everyday objects, combined discarded packaging, random found objects and other materials, to create art objects. 

Painting and music blur to a rhythmic work

Larry Rivers worked with Jean Tinguely during a stay in Paris in the 1960s and later collaborated with Howard Kanovitz in London. He constantly broadened his artistic spectrum and even eventually incorporated electric light into his installations. He participated in Documenta in Kassel three times and was interested in the new media of film and video. His students included the German musician Wolfgang Niedecken who in retrospect described his period of learning with Rivers as significant. His early influence from jazz music also affected Rivers’ painting method; the painter’s light and fresh brushwork was characterised by a proven sense of rhythm. 

Larry Rivers died on 14 August 2002 in his hometown of New York.