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Larry Rivers

(1923-2002), Artist

Artist of 1 portrait
Born Yitzroch Grossberg in the Bronx, New York in 1923, at 17 Rivers began a career as a jazz saxophonist. In 1947 he enrolled at the Hans Hofmann School, New York and was influenced by the Bonnard exhibition at the MoMA (1948). He joined the New York School 'The Club', which included artists Jackson Pollock and Willem de Kooning, and poets Kenneth Koch and Frank O'Hara. In 1951 he started making plaster sculpture, and his painting The Burial, the first in a series whose subject was the last of the Civil War veterans, Walter Williams. Rivers was one of the first artists to introduce ready-made images from popular culture as subject matter in what became known as Pop Art.

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David Sylvester ('Mr Art')

by Larry Rivers
oil on canvas, 1962
NPG 6675

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United States

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Larry Rivers

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