Larry Rivers, Parts of the Body, Hair & Eye

(New York, 1923-2002)

Abstract figural composition, 1963, signed verso "Rivers/'63" and titled, collage, oil, crayon, nails and staples, 60 x 40 in.; parcel gilt and painted wood frame, 64-1/4 x 45-1/2 x 2-1/4 in.

Provenance: Gimpel Fils Gallery, London (labels verso); The Estate of Mrs. Lloyd S. Lloyds, Manhattan, New York and Palm Beach, Florida; by descent in the family

Note: "In 1962 the Mayfair gallery Gimpel Fils began to place increasing emphasis on American art, starting with the exhibition A Selection of East Coast and West Coast American Painters (March 1962). This was followed by the first British exhibition of Larry Rivers, then living in Paris. Rivers had visited England the previous year, when he lectured at the Ealing School of Art.

The catalogue included texts by poet John Ashbery and Art News editor Thomas B. Hess, who proclaimed Rivers ‘one of the leaders of the second wave of New York school painting ’Rivers’s playful figurative art generated substantial interest as part of the movement towards a ‘return to the image’, although its spontaneity owed as much to abstract expressionism as to pop art.

Rivers’s 1962 Gimpel Fils exhibition included Parts of the Body: French Vocabulary Lesson, 1961, which was purchased that year by the Tate Gallery." - The Tate Gallery, London