Robert De Niro, Sr: Paintings & Drawings 1948-1989 by DC Moore Gallery

ROBERT DE NIRO, SR

ROBERT DE NIRO, SR Paintings & Drawings 1948 â&#x20AC;&#x201C; 1989

Essay by Robert Kushner With an article by Eleanor C. Munro from ARTnews, May 1958

D C

M O O R E

G A L L E R Y

“De Niro succeeds in keeping every inch of the canvas alive — spinning the spokes of a parasol with yellow gashes; letting purples or oranges cascade down or push up and across a studio interior. The result is a feeling of luxury, poise and affable richness, combined with a sort of nervous impetuosity, that is more than a proof of maturity.” – THOMAS B. H ESS, ARTNEWS , FE B R UARY, 1951

Untitled Abstraction, c. 1947â&#x20AC;&#x201C;48. Oil on linen, 22 x 26 inches

Still Life with Greek Head, 1955. Oil on canvas, 30 x 22 inches

THE INTOXICATION OFCOLOR Robert Kushner

HERE WAS A TIME ,

not so long ago in the New York art world, as late as

the 1970s, when art, aesthetics, opinions, and emotions rode so high that artists would fight over ideas. At that time, one of my mentors, an established sculptor, and his colleagues would have verbal battles of sufficient intensity that would result in deeply hurt feelings and protracted sullen silences. This is the world that Robert De Niro, Sr. inhabited, a roughand-tumble art world, based on strongly held positions and personal integrity, vastly different from the surface coolness and suave self-promotion of today. Ideas and Art (with a capital A) were preeminent, and if you were a player, Art mattered desperately. It was the most important game in town. In this melee of mid-century American aesthetic discourse, De Niro was a singular devotee of velocity, of rapid, confident, tempestuous execution, and of an evenly worked, wet surface. He was also a devout acolyte of modernist color. To register a glimpse of De Niroâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s personal chromopolis (city of colors) letâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s consider Still Life with Greek Head (1955). This confident painting first appears to be a variation on a still life study with a customary display of tabletop objects pushed precariously to the edges of the composition. Closer examination reveals that it is all of this, but also a highly sophisticated chromatic essay. The eye is initially drawn to a bravura grape-violet flourish, which at first appears to be a calligraphic squiggle, but additionally defines

the hair of an antique classical bust. This fillip surrounds a scraped and scumbled area to which it gives volume as the coiffure of the bust. The face of the Greek maiden is nothing more than wiped off and scraped canvas revealing her violet and green profile. Now the fun begins. The head rests on a cubic base that is black on the face and a deep Egyptian violet on the receding plane. Nearby a cherry-red vase with defining lines scratched into the wet paint by the handle end of the brush supports a strange blue shape painted with a glowing ultramarine blue. De Niro’s brush has picked up streaks of the background aqua which accentuates the blue form. To the right rests a yellow vase. Here, the brush has also mingled with the background aqua, mixing with the yellow to blend into an oddly restful green. The edge of the table consists of one flat stripe of lavender laid in on top of a darker stripe of thalo blue. At the top of the painting, three hastily rendered rectangles are perhaps paintings on the wall, which complement the geometric forms along the bottom. What could be read as a non-objective array of geometric shapes, coalesces into a convincing still life inhabiting real space. De Niro was an unrepentant Francophile, and for him (as for many of us) the leader of the pack was Henri Matisse. Perhaps one could even say that De Niro loved Matisse a little bit too much. Matisse introduced into the avant-garde dialogue a concept of modern color— color decisions divorced from surface description. This use of liberated color was a cornerstone for De Niro. When it came to painting De Niro accepted unquestioningly Matisse’s preferences for subject matter, composition, and chromatic intensity. In De Niro’s drawings and works on paper, the debt to Matisse is even more unmistakable. Nudes recline leisurely in the middle of exotic interiors bountiful with interesting objects. Still life and landscape are the two other forums for discovery. But in some distinctive ways, De Niro diverges from Matisse. The younger artist’s rambunctious brushwork offers an initial and

lasting impression. Consequently, De Niro’s paintings are a nearly violent dialogue between the wildness of the brush and the orderliness of the subject. While Matisse as inspiration rests front and center, another potent antecedent for De Niro was the French painter Georges Rouault. In Rouault’s work, there is always a hard defining black edge to the forms painted with a fluid and somewhat stolid brushstroke. Rouault filled in his forms with flattened color yielding a sober, often religious, statement. In looking toward Rouault, De Niro found a way around the elegant draftsmanship that we find in Matisse. Lines could be more “brut” and workmanlike. De Niro’s contribution to Rouault’s magisterial rectitude, is that he charges his lines with full tilt vibrant colors—red, plum, deep blue —which contrast and complement the tones they are enclosing. De Niro paints fast, wipes out, repaints. His brush dances over the surface in repeatable rhythms that we reexperience in the finished canvases. There are home movies of De Niro painting with confidence and at breakneck speed. In these films he is poised, attentive, and lithe. His attack is bold and fast. He seems to be dancing in relationship to the canvas. The artist becomes a vector integrating the observed model, the paint itself, and the surface of the canvas. In life, De Niro liked to dance and was known as a skilled social dancer. His sense of rhythm and movement in life is at one with his lyrical approach to the canvas. Landscape offered De Niro compositions based on horizontal and vertical straight lines, as opposed to his figurative curves and flourishes. Often, particularly in his landscapes, it seems that De Niro is searching, looking, and only partially finding resolution. Through his process of deleting and repainting, he locates a resolution that is unexpected, subtle, and amorphic. Often at that point he considers the painting complete. The history of his search

remains in the hints of outlines and previously painted shapes, and the result is something intentionally unresolved. We are left to contemplate just when and why he stopped painting, and to question: what is completion anyway? De Niro came to public prominence early in life, perhaps too early. By age nineteen, he was studying with Hans Hofmann in Provincetown, Massachusetts, who declared De Niro and his soon-to-be wife, Virginia Admiral,

his best students. By age twenty-six, De Niro’s work was being exhibited by Peggy Guggenheim in her influential Art of This Century Gallery, along with Jackson Pollock, Willem de Kooning, and others. He was a protégé of Hilla Rebay, the director of what was to become the Guggenheim Museum. De Niro’s paintings were singled out and praised by prominent reviewers such as Clement Greenberg, Frank O’Hara, and Thomas Hess. By the 1950s, he was exhibiting and showing with regularity, and selling. But at

just about this time, the mood of the art world irreversibly began to shift. Every era offers an artist both unique opportunities as well as challenges. Certain times present larger challenges. An enormous sea change occurred in the early 1950s, after a core group of large-scale, gestural abstractionists broke through and dictated what the next step was to be. The gospel of large, embracing formats, of unprecedented bold brushwork, and a studied unfinished look was communicated around the world at a rapid pace. De Niro rode that wave and painted brilliantly. However, to quote art historian Irving Sandler: “What happens around 1958 … really by 1962, I’ve always referred to it as a blood bath. There is a radical change in style. A young generation of artists —Abstract painters, Pop, Hard Edge suppress the painterly quality of their work. The energy of paint, the sweep of paint, the movement of paint, and this is really what interested De Niro, always his emphasis—suddenly this becomes very unfashionable.”

What is a motivated artist to do at a time like this? To his credit, De Niro stuck to his guns, rode the path, and found new variations to explore. De Niro and his supporters consistently distanced his work from Abstract Expressionist praxis. But why? Most frequently he is linked with a group of artists concerned with figuration and representation. It is true that De Niro felt that pure abstraction could become simplistic and formulaic. He consciously avoided contact with the older generation of Abstract Expressionists. But from today’s viewpoint, there appears less and less of a difference. De Kooning became very committed to subject matter in his paintings of women and landscapes. Pollock with his faces. And what about Philip Guston who did a huge turn toward representation but was still considered a player? What of Elaine de Kooning’s portraits, or Grace Hartigan’s Queens? If we define Abstract Expressionism as a collection of loosely rendered brushstrokes, which leaves the history of the painting’s genesis obvious and clear, all of which reveals the painter’s inner state of mind, then De Niro consistently remained right in step with his colleagues. Even if he did not consider himself AbEx, he loved this gutsy and direct attitude toward painting. De Niro liked to keep his themes nonconfrontational: interiors, nudes, landscapes, still lifes. His sense of provocation relied on attack and brio. Let’s look at Woman in Red of 1961, a major figurative composition that was shown the following year at the Museum of Modern Art in an exhibition entitled Recent Painting U.S.A.: The Figure. The central figure is a seated woman in a stylish red dress. The dress is a dramatic whirlwind of cadmium red brushstrokes intermixed with black under- and overpainting. Drips of red paint clue us into the velocity and frenzy of the execution. They seem to say: “I am not worried about drips and erasures, the essential elements here are energy and intensity.” Our lady is clutching a plumpurple shawl. Her chair is a complementary tourmaline green. In contrast

to all the intensity of color and drawing, her face is rendered simply and calmly with a short series of black gestures that coalesce into an attentive and watchful expression. Surrounding our diva is an abstract field of blue which transitions from dusty teal to browned turquoise to cerulean to clear aqua. A mauve horizontal scumble defines the edge between the wall and the floor. On the left, two forms— one a lemon-yellow vertical stripe and the other a cadmium orange series of stripes anchor the figure. On the wall is a black-framed painting. There always seem to be paintings on the walls of these compositions. In the middle of all this activity, the figure maintains her serene gaze punctuated by her pursed red lips. The confident tone of her face makes us wonder whether this is a studio model or a youngish socialite posing for a commissioned portrait? When De Niro is at his best, he holds us captive with the fluid speed of his brush, the strange off-harmonies of color, and the composed areas of flatness in his compositions. His best paintings, like this one, reveal humanizing hints of his diffidence at the same time that they create a broad arena for his bravura, his painterly skills, and panache. Spending time with a painting like Woman in Red reminds us of the profound pleasure of seeing paint skillfully applied to canvas in a well-matched balance of abandon and control.

ROBERT KUSHNER is an artist and writer whose artwork has been exhibited extensively in the

United States, Europe, and Asia, and has been included in the Whitney Biennial and the Venice Biennale. His work was the subject of solo exhibitions at both the Whitney Museum of American Art and the Brooklyn Museum. A midcareer retrospective of his work was organized by the Institute of Contemporary Art, Philadelphia. Kushner’s works are included in many prominent public collections including Galleria degli Uffizi; J. Paul Getty Trust; The Metropolitan Museum of Art; The Museum of Modern Art; Museum Ludwig; The National Gallery of Art; The Philadelphia Museum of Art; San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; Smithsonian American Art Museum; Tate Gallery; and The Whitney Museum of American Art. Recently, Kushner served as the editor as well as a contributor to Amy Goldin: Art in a Hairshirt, Art Criticism 1964–1978 (Hard Press Editions, 2011).

Woman in Red, 1961. Oil on linen, 70 x 54 inches

Still Life, 1959. Oil on paper, 22 5/8 x 30 1/2 inches

Still Life, 1959. Oil on paper, 22 1/2 x 31 inches

Still Life with Dog, 1958â&#x20AC;&#x201C;59. Gouache and ink on paper, 30 1/4 x 18 1/4 inches

Lola Montez with Cigarette, 1958â&#x20AC;&#x201C;59. Gouache and ink on paper, 36 x 24 inches

“Robert De Niro is one of the most original and powerful younger painters showing today, and each show of his is an event.” – FRAN K O’HARA, ARTNEWS , MARCH, 1955

Untitled (Still Life with Classical Head), 1960. Oil on linen, 36 x 54 inches

“During an era of propulsive abstract rhythms and open structure, De Niro escapes the looseness no less than the nervous aggressiveness of many younger New York talents today, and instead wields a relaxed power. His sense of the picture as composition, also rare today, is of genuine finesse.” – PAR KE R TYLE R, ARTNEWS , SU M M E R, 1956

Untitled, 1960. Oil on linen, 54 x 38 inches

“Robert De Niro’s still-lifes and landscapes have an electrifying jumping rhythm. . . . His paintings tend to have the aura of smudge which starts as an elimination of a form or a color and survives as a living part of the work, like the charcoal smudges in a drawing by Matisse.” – LAWR E NCE CAM PB E LL, ARTNEWS , SE PTE M B E R, 1963

St.-Just-en-Chevalet, 1963. Oil on linen, 28 5/8 x 23 1/2 inches

“To describe his particular color, the word ‘lyrical’ is not enough. . . . He pushes everything to abstraction, but at the end makes certain, by the addition of signs, that his paintings are not confused with abstract paintings.” – LAWR E NCE CAM PB E LL, ARTNEWS , OCTOB E R, 1960

Portrait of a Young Man with Red Face, 1961. Oil on canvas, 40 x 30 inches

“Robert De Niro is a painter of such simple mastery that one is awed. His masters are obviously Manet and Matisse. He has followed their dominant line and direct color, and added the vigor learned from New York painters of the ’fifties and ’sixties.” – B R UCE DU FF HOOTE N, ARTNEWS , JAN UARY, 1967

Portrait of a Woman in a Green Blouse, 1961. Oil on canvas, 40 x 36 inches

Still Life with Three Vases and Bust, 1968. Oil on paper, mounted on fiberboard, 30 x 22 inches

Still Life with Flowers, Vase and Tazza, 1969. Oil on masonite, 30 x 22 inches

“Robert De Niro’s paintings in any category of subject — a nude, a landscape or bottles on a table — always bear the imprint of his attack: the touch. His image seems to have been captured through a process of battles, retreats and advances, stroke by stroke, with each triumph leaving a spontaneous imprint.” – NATALI E E DGAR, ARTNEWS , APR I L, 1970

Red House with Blue Door, 1970. Oil on panel, 30 x 34 inches

“While other ‘loose’ figurative painters use brilliant color and bravura brushwork as De Niro does, with reference to a tradition stretching back to Chardin, he more than any other comes to resemble the aspects of this legacy which appeared in the abstract paintings of the 1950s. As in those paintings, the gorgeousness of the hand in De Niro’s work makes the viewer aware of the canvas itself as a painted presence as much as a window to the perception of the subject.” – DE BORAH ROSE NTHAL, ARTS , FE B R UARY, 1977

Seated Nude with Green Pants, 1970. Oil on linen, 36 x 28 inches

Still Life with Guitar, Torso, and Two Vases, 1971. Oil on linen, 36 x 28 1/2 inches

Figure in a Hat with Rubber Plant, 1976. Oil on canvas, 50 x 60 inches

“Lush paint, luscious color, luxuriant nudes — an almost animal heat radiates from Robert De Niro’s canvases of the past six years. . . . In his most successful paintings . . . De Niro’s virtuoso integration of line, color and shape merges surface and depth. . . . He composes with classical rigor, disciplining Fauve ebullience by carefully connecting and echoing shapes, and by relating them to the edges of the canvas. His vision of opulence is ordered by cool intelligence. De Niro is an architect of colors and curves.” – HAYDE N H E R R E RA, ART IN AMERICA , MAY/J U N E, 1977

Birdcage, Two Vases and Flowers, 1981. Oil on linen, 40 x 30 inches

“To linger over any of the pictures in the show is to be seduced by its innuendo, to answer its invitation, to feel the slow smoky dreaminess of a suddenly smudged line, to go along with it. . . . The technical wonder of this exhibition is that De Niro, still using his familiar ‘kinetic’ line and ‘vibrant’ color, can produce paintings of such quiet and demanding confidence.” – RAY MATH EW, ARTS , MAY, 1984

Moroccan Women, 1984. Oil on linen, 70 x 76 inches

“Although his references are obvious, I’ve never yet seen a painting by him which did not look like he had painted it. What his work shares with that of the masters he reveres is a quality of Sehnsucht , or romantic desire. . . . I place De Niro among the leaders of painting today, one of those who make of New York the great art center it has been since the 1940s.” – LAWR E NCE CAM PB E LL, ART IN AMERICA , SE PTE M B E R, 1984

Still Life with Vase of Flowers, Lemons, Chair and Guitar, 1989. Oil on linen, 34 x 40 inches

By Eleanor C. Munro Photographs by Rudolph Burckhardt

works on a series of pictures

Originally published by ARTnews in the May 1958 article “Robert De Niro Works on a Series of Pictures.”

It is somehow humanly reassuring to note that, even in the present atmosphere of esthetic license, a painter still has, like his ancestors, to find his way through the barriers of his own spirit. Robert De Niro’s semi-abstract paintings, composed of large, simple shapes and unshaded colors, have won him considerable notice. There are subjects and techniques in which he finds it easy to experiment. From a single sitting of a model, he may bring away dozens of drawings. He has painted, as he says, “inexhaustible” studies of Moroccan women, Anna Magnani, Garbo as Anna Christie and other themes which attract him. Yet, over the past five years, De Niro has time and time again bumped up against a stone in his channel, a subject which lies in wait, lures him on and then shipwrecks him. The subject is the Crucifixion. De Niro is not unprepared to cope with such a problem. Years of study in academic and abstract painting lie behind him. Born in Syracuse, N.Y., in 1922, he decided at the age of five to be an artist. As a child, he studied at the Syracuse Museum School. He showed promise, and hard work brought him to the notice of his teacher, who encouraged him to join the adult classes. There he worked at charcoal drawings from life and from plaster casts, a discipline which is reflected today in his preference for working in front of the model— still-life or live. Every day after school, De Niro drew and painted in a private studio which the Museum finally turned over to him. When he was sixteen, he began to experiment with abstract designs. That year, he left Syracuse to find teachers who could help him develop his new interest. In Gloucester, he worked with Ralph Pearson. In Black Mountain— which until it closed recently offered young artists one of the most congenial apprenticeships in this country— he worked with Josef Albers. But Albers found his painting too Expressionistic and emotional. And De Niro, for his part, thought Albers’ esthetic too restricted. For, during a previous summer at Provincetown and thereafter during several seasons, De Niro had studied with Hans Hofmann. Like so many of his contemporaries now exhibiting in New York, De Niro found in these classes an open door to the kind of art he liked. In 1941, De Niro settled in New York, where he has lived ever since, moving occasionally from studio to studio. For five years, he worked as a guard at the then Non-Objective Museum, where Hilla Rebay’s spectacular collection of Kandinskys hung. In 1946 he was given his first show at Peggy Guggenheim’s gallery. From time to time since then, De Niro has supported himself by working in frame shops, or giving private lessons, teaching in a settlement school, giving a class at the Museum of Modern Art and, just recently, by painting commissioned portraits. He is thus one of the few avant-garde painters to have made a success of that

always tantalizing and frustrating problem, the non-academic portrait. As with his painting, in other things De Niro is inclined to fix on a project, then work hard to achieve it. This way, he taught himself to read French, though he has only rarely heard it spoken. Now he writes poetry in that language. Tennis, chess and, sometimes, metapsychology have been other pre-occupations. Versus “clubs,” Isms and formulas, De Niro, who says he has several times turned his life upside down, now wants “peace and quiet” for his painting and himself. His studio, on the Lower East Side, seems to emcompass both these elements of his life: paint tubes, cans, pastel sticks and scraps of paper lie scrambled next to cold, white plaster walls. But here and there are islands of carefully arranged objects: on a table are a Classical head, a straw bottle, a pink shell and a fluted glass vase. On a wall hang reproductions of a greyed Corot river and bridge, an Archaic Kore, an Ingres drawing; a photograph of Garbo and one of some veiled Moroccan women. These are inlets where the eye lingers. All these objects serve as models. Though at one time De Niro’s work was completely abstract, he now always starts and ends with a clear subject. His process of working is akin to the Chinese way, or to Matisse’s: this is, step by step he reduces and simplifies, not only the image, but his brushwork, the surface and the interior spaces of the canvas. He paints not to build up forms within the canvas, to activate the surface or the “push-pull” relationships that Hofmann stresses. Instead, he swiftly draws his main image with charcoal on a stretched, pre-primed canvas, filling the space. Next he lays on large, flat areas of color. Then, returning to the canvas again and again over a period of weeks, De Niro will simplify, cover large areas with flat strokes of the palette-knife, scrape huge sections bare with a turpentine-soaked rag, and draw broad, outlined forms with one of his Rubens brushes. He paints rather like a furniture mover: shifting whole objects to the right or left, pushing a big form completely offstage, covering up a welter of detail by a cloth of pale, greyed color. He works in series, approaching a subject head-on and obliquely over three or four versions. Simplicity and logic of structure are what he aims for – a cool, controlled composition. As he proceeds with an oil, he may turn aside to make a spate of pen-and-ink drawings from another model. These he completes swiftly, using a Chinese bamboo pen, or perhaps charcoal. For emphasis, he may touch on a bit of pastel, or watercolor. Book after book of these quick studies pile up. Most end in the wastebasket. Perhaps ten out of a hundred, De Niro keeps for exhibition and his own use. De Niro first tackled the Crucifixion subject in 1953. Why he did so, and whatever psychological reasons exist for his difficulties with it, are not within the scope of this article, except to note

that the artist comes from an Irish-Italian family; and, at a fairly early age, he neglected the Church. This was the first time he had chosen a religious subject. It seemed just another image; he protests against any deeper meaning; nor has he even a clear knowledge of historical iconography of the Crucifixion. The three Marys who appear in several versions, and the Roman centurion whose golden helmet became a major compositional element, were, De Niro emphasizes, just images he vaguely remembered from pictures in museums. And in fact, they appear and then vanish like wraiths. One image, Christ alone— a black gash down the canvas’ center, with shreds of red paint for blood, and white paint for cloth— strikes a cord which links the series. Between 1953 and ’57, De Niro painted about six gouaches and several oils on the Crucifixion theme, the first of which Meyer Schapiro selected for Gloria Vanderbilt’s collection. But none of these satisfied him. In one canvas, he drew deep magenta crosses. Blue-green slashes of color defined the mourners. A gold, featherlike form rose up from the lower left: the helmet. Dark blue hills swept back from the close-up scene. But the whole canvas was scraped down to the bare bone. On a smaller field, De Niro introduced two soldiers playing dice below the cross, then obliterated them. “I was just stuck, that’s all,” says the artist. He would draw in large, ghostly profiles of the lamenting Marys, shift the profiles to the right and left, cover one with grey paint, replace it, then wipe out the whole composition and begin again, Of one oil version, he said, “It’s like a tentative thing. The background is in a different style, or feeling, from the rest. The figures are painted one way and the ground another.” At one time, the motif itself worried him: “The cross and figure is a stereotype … no emotional conviction behind it.” Then a whole canvas looked like an indecipherable snarl: “It’s just vagueness again. It’s not clear and I can’t stand that.” A little later, De Niro brushed off the problem, claiming, “It’s just a subject I haven’t gone far enough with.” In 1956, after relaxing some of his tension by making hundreds of drawings on subjects suggested by a magazine article on Morocco, De Niro returned to the religious subject. But this was “the worst ever … nothing new … repeating an empty thing.” Curiously enough, though De Niro realizes that a model before him, either a person or a still-life arrangement, seems to release his hand and his imagination, he never used one for these religious paintings. “I never do drawings of the Crucifixion. Maybe it’s working without a model [that causes the trouble] … the figures are not figures.” “Maybe,” he said, “I could do more if I stood up and did drawings.” But he never did. Alone, of the entire Crucifixion series, one gouache seemed to come under some kind of control. Of it, De Niro says: “Somehow

Working back and forth between his various Crucifixion versions, De Niro kept trying to achieve a compositional scheme which satisfied him. One canvas, later destroyed, shifted from a centralized scheme to a heavy plan of two crosses side by side.

With a loaded brush, the artist freely draws in an outline form.

it has feeling. Though some parts look confused, they aren’t; they’re felt. It’s much better composed than the oils. It stays on a level.” The gouache is, in fact, the simplest of all the series, and in this respect, it is closest to those other paintings to which he turned all the while, for relief and encouragement. Over the whole, rather complex ground, De Niro drew a grey film, translucent, encroaching upon the three upright forms of Christ and the thieves. Only vestiges of blue and red show through this grey cast, ghosts of the subsidiary images which he could never satisfactorily bring into adjustment in the other versions. Only a yellow smudge remains of the Roman helmet. With a heavily loaded brush, De Niro scored the arms and leg of the cross, and an oval for the suspended body. Black became just a fierce, wooden form, and the white cloth, a hard, abstract shape. In this gouache, structure had enveloped the subject. Though the whole Crucifixion series was done with his eyes, as it were, turn inwards, De Niro recently began another, oblique attach on the religious theme by doing several Descent from the Cross studies and for these, “I did look at reproductions to get ideas … Rubens, Veronese.” One admires the persistence with which this artist, whose success in other avenues comes fairly easy, keeps worrying the knot. “I have to keep on and do it in a more subtle way,” he says. The problem seems to be summed up, on the level of execution, as well perhaps as on a level of personal psychology, by De Niro’s comment on one of those uncontrollable oils of 1955: “It’s just too primitive in the worst sense.” For some of his fellow artists, primitive moods and motifs are a fertile ground for their art. Not for De Niro, who admires the She Wolf period of Pollock as against his later styles, the early Hofmann as against the “shouting” last ones; who thinks Balthus too morbid, and names Matisse, Bonnard and Picasso among his most admired painters. De Niro’s struggle calls to mind the not too different problem of his favorite master, Ingres, whose labors over his portraits were prolonged and infuriating to both the artist and sitter. “His best works are his portraits,” says De Niro. “They have a certain elegance and sensual quality.” At the same time, he quotes Baudelaire’s comment that the only good pictures are religious ones; all others are just commissions. De Niro’s frustrating involvement with the Crucifixion series must be— in the broad, psychological sense Baudelaire intended— typical of every artist’s, if not every man’s, slow progress against his own devils. And, all the while, he must refresh himself by touching the ground of subjects free of paralyzing powers, subjects for De Niro like a human face— Moroccan or Magnani— or the clear arc of a glass bowl.

ROBERT DE NIRO, SR (1922-1993) 1922 Born in Syracuse, NY 1933–37 Attends art classes at the Syracuse Museum, is provided with a

room at the museum to work in independently 1938 At age sixteen, spends summer at Ralph Pearson’s art school in Gloucester, MA 1939 Spends summer studying with Hans Hofmann in Provincetown, MA 1939–40 Attends Black Mountain College, studies with Josef Albers 1941 Moves to New York City. Attends Hofmann’s school in New York.

Meets Virginia Admiral. Spends summer in Provincetown at the Hans Hofmann School of Fine Arts. 1942 Continues studies at the Hofmann School. Marries Virginia Admiral.

They spend summer in Provincetown studying at the Hofmann School. 1943 Works at the Museum of Non-Objective Painting (later called the

Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum). Son Robert is born. 1945 Included in his first exhibition in the Fall Salon at Peggy Guggenheim’s Art of This Century Gallery, New York, NY 1946 Has first one-man exhibition in May at Peggy Guggenheim’s Art of This Century Gallery, New York, NY 1950 Robert De Niro, Charles Egan Gallery, New York, NY 1951 Robert De Niro, Charles Egan Gallery, New York, NY

Included in The Ninth Street Show, 60 East 9th Street, New York, NY 1952 Museum Purchase Fund acquires his first large Crucifixion painting

Robert De Niro, Charles Egan Gallery, New York, NY 1953 Robert De Niro, Charles Egan Gallery, New York, NY 1954 Robert De Niro, Charles Egan Gallery, New York, NY 1955 Robert De Niro, Poindexter Gallery, New York, NY

Robert De Niro, Charles Egan Gallery, New York, NY 1956 Robert De Niro, Poindexter Gallery, New York, NY

Included in the Whitney Museum of American Art Annual, New York, NY Included in Stable Gallery Annual, New York, NY 1957 Included in Artists of the New York School, Second Generation, The Jewish Museum, New York, NY 1958 Wins the Longview Foundation Purchase Award

Robert De Niro: Paintings and Drawings, Zabriskie Gallery, New York, NY 1959 Included in 100 Works on Paper: Part 1, United States, The Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston, MA 1960 Robert De Niro: Charcoal Drawings and Watercolors, Zabriskie Gallery, New York, NY

Robert De Niro, Recent Paintings, Zabriskie Gallery, New York, NY Included in Seventieth Annual Exhibition, Nebraska Art Association, Lincoln, NE Recipient of Fifth International Hallmark Art Award. Included in The Question of the Future: Fifth International Hallmark Art Award, Wildenstein Gallery, New York, NY

Robert De Niro, Sr. and Virginia Admiral, c. 1945.

1960–61 Included in The Figure in Contemporary American Painting, American Federation of Arts, New York, NY (traveling exhibition) 1961 Moves to France. Lives in Paris, Gravigny, Baren, and Saint-Just-enChevalet between 1961 and 1964. Art collector and patron Joseph

Hirshhorn acquires several oil paintings and works on paper. Robert De Niro: Drawings, Smolin Gallery, New York, NY Included in Rocky Mountain Region Artist’s Equity Association Exhibition, Colorado Springs Fine Arts Center Annual, CO Included in 7th Annual Drawing and Small Sculpture Show, Ball State Teachers College, Muncie, IN 1962 Included in Portraits, Zabriskie Gallery, New York, NY

Included in Merwin & Wakeley Galleries Annual, Illinois Wesleyan University, Bloomington, IL

Included in A New Consciousness, The CIBA-GEIGY Collection, Hudson River Museum, Yonkers, NY Included in Inaugural Exhibition: Recent Paintings and Sculpture by Gallery Artists, Zabriskie Gallery, New York, NY 1973 Robert De Niro, Zoller Gallery, Pennsylvania State University, University Park, PA 1974 Lithographs, Kansas City Art Institute, MO 1975 Included in group exhibition at Reese Palley Gallery, Atlantic City, NJ and San Francisco, CA 1976 Robert De Niro, Poindexter Gallery, New York, NY

Included in group exhibition at Becker Galleries, New York, NY 1977 Included in The Art of Pastel, James Graham & Sons Gallery, New York, NY

Included in Figures, Kornblee Gallery, New York, NY Included in Recent Painting U.S.A.: Figure, The Museum of Modern Art, New York, NY Robert De Niro: Sculpture and Drawings, Zabriskie Gallery, New York, NY 1963 Robert De Niro: New Paintings from Paris and the Pyrenees, Zabriskie Gallery, New York, NY

Included in Five American Paintings, Knoedler Gallery, New York, NY Robert De Niro, Zabriskie Gallery, New York, NY 1965 Robert De Niro: Garbo Series, Zabriskie Gallery, New York, NY

Included in Portraits from the American Art World, New School Art Center, New York, NY 1966 Returns from France.

Included in American Flowers of the 1960s, Zabriskie Gallery, New York, NY 1967 Robert De Niro: Sculpture and Drawings, Zabriskie Gallery, New York, NY

Robert De Niro, State University of New York, Buffalo, NY 1967–75 Teaches summer sessions at State University of New York, Buffalo.

Also teaches in New York City at Cooper Union, the New School for Social Research, the School of Visual Arts, the New York School of Drawing, Painting and Sculpture, and the Michigan State University in East Lansing, MI. 1968 Awarded Guggenheim Fellowship

Robert De Niro: Bronze Figure Sculpture, Zabriskie Gallery, New York, NY Robert De Niro, Seventeen Paintings, Ten Sculptures, Ten Drawings, Reese Palley Gallery, Atlantic City, NJ and San Francisco, CA 1969 Included in Varieties of Figurative Art, Bard College, Annandale-onHudson, NY

Included in Homage to Matisse, Grace Borgenicht Gallery, New York, NY 1970 Robert De Niro: Paintings, Zabriskie Gallery, New York, NY 1971 Robert De Niro, Brenner Gallery, Provincetown, MA

1978 Paintings and Drawings, Charles Campbell Gallery, San Francisco, CA

Robert De Niro, David Stuart Gallery, Los Angeles, CA Works on Paper, Arts Gallery, Baltimore, MD Works on Paper, William Grappo Gallery, Swain School of Design, New Bedford, MA Included in The New Landscape, Bell Gallery, Brown University, Providence, RI Included in Days Lumberyard Studios: Provincetown 1914–1971, Provincetown Art Association and Museum, MA 1979 Paintings of Bernal Heights, Charles Campbell Gallery, San Francisco, CA

Robert De Niro, James Graham & Sons Gallery, New York, NY 1980 Robert De Niro, Hobart and William Smith Colleges, Geneva, NY

Robert De Niro, James Graham & Sons Gallery, New York, NY 1981 Drawings by Robert De Niro, Foster/White Gallery, Seattle, WA

Robert De Niro: Recent Paintings and Drawings, Mint Museum, Charlotte, NC (traveled to Asheville Art Museum, NC) Included in An American Choice: The Muriel Kallis Steinberg Newman Collection, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, NY 1982 Robert De Niro, James Graham & Sons Gallery, New York, NY

Included in The 46th Annual National Midyear Show, The Butler Institute of American Art, Youngstown, OH 1983 Robert De Niro, David Hamilton Gallery, Charleston, SC 1984 Robert De Niro, Graham Modern Gallery, New York, NY

Included in 20th Century American Drawings: The Figure in Context, The Terra Museum of American Art; organized by The International Exhibition Foundation, Washington, DC (traveling exhibition) Included in Emotional Impact: New York School Figurative Expressionism, circulated by the Art Museum Association of America, San Francisco, CA (traveling exhibition) Included in Women: A Changing Picture, James Graham & Sons Gallery, New York, NY

1985 Included in Selections from the New York Collection 1985–1986, The Members Gallery, Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo, NY

Included in Summer Yellows, Graham Modern Gallery, New York, NY

2002 Robert De Niro, Sr., La Galerie Metta, Madrid, Spain

Included in Annual Exhibition, National Academy of Design, New York, NY

2003 Included in Bay Area Revisited, Helena Schick Art Gallery, Skidmore College, Saratoga Springs, NY

Included in Survival of the Fittest I, Ingber Gallery, New York, NY 1986 Robert De Niro, Contemporary Arts Center, Great Falls, MT

Robert De Niro, Crane Kalman Gallery, London, England Robert De Niro, Graham Modern Gallery, New York, NY Included in Form or Formula, Drawing and Drawings, The Hudson River Museum, Yonkers, NY Robert De Niro: Expression as Tradition— Modern Classicism Redefined, Paris Gibson Center for Contemporary Art, Great Falls, MT (traveling exhibition) 1987 Included in Vision and Tradition, The Morris Museum, Morristown, NJ and Colby College Museum, Waterville, ME 1990 Included in The Provocative Years 1935–1945: The Hans Hofmann

School and Its Students in Provincetown, Provincetown Art Association and Museum, MA 1991 Receives Honorary Degree at Briarwood College, Southington, CT 1992 Included in Color As Subject, The Artists’ Museum in association

with Tibor de Nagy Gallery and Staempfli Gallery, The Police Building, New York, NY 1993 Dies in New York, May 3rd

Included in Gallery Selections, Salander-O’Reilly Galleries, New York, NY Included in The Most Difficult Journey: The Poindexter Collections of American Modernist Painting, Yellowstone Art Museum, Billings, MT; organized by ExhibitsUSA (traveling exhibition) Included in Selected Works, Hackett-Freedman Gallery, San Francisco, CA 2003– 04 Included in Watercolor, Kouros Gallery, New York, NY, and Schweinfurth Memorial Art Center, Auburn, NY 2004 Robert De Niro, Sr., Salander-O’Reilly Galleries, New York, NY

Included in A Black Mountain Assemblage, ACA Galleries, New York, NY 2004–05 Robert De Niro, Sr., Ministero per i Beni e le Attiviti Culturali – Soprint-

endenza Speciale, Galleria Nazionale d’Arte Moderna, Rome, Italy 2005 Robert De Niro, Sr., La Piscine-Musée d’Art et d’Industrie André

Diligent, Roubaix, France 2006 Robert De Niro, Sr.: Works from the Studio, Hackett-Freedman Gallery, San Francisco, CA 2007 Robert De Niro, Sr., Lisbon Village Festival, Portugal

Included in Monumental Nudes, Salander-O’Reilly Galleries, New York, NY

2008 Robert De Niro, Sr.: Summer Landscapes, Ameringer & Yohe Fine Art, New York, NY

1995 Robert De Niro, Sr.: Paintings, Salander-O’Reilly Galleries, New York, NY

2009 Included in From Unuhús to West 8th Street, Reykjavik Art Museum,

Included in American Masters of Watercolor: A 100 Year Survey, Southern Alleghenies Museum of Art, Loretto, PA 1996 Robert De Niro,Sr.: Charcoals 1958–1981, Salander-O’Reilly Galleries, New York, NY 1997 Robert De Niro, Sr.: Paintings, Salander-O’Reilly Galleries, New York, NY 1998 Paintings and Works on Paper, Hackett-Freedman Gallery, San Francisco, CA

Robert De Niro, Sr., Yoshii Gallery, Tokyo, Japan Included in Seeing the Essential: Selected Works by Robert De Niro, Sr., Paul Resika, and Leland Bell, Hackett-Freedman Gallery, San Francisco, CA 1999 Robert De Niro, Sr., Galerie Piltzer, Paris, France

Robert De Niro, Sr.: Works on Paper, Salander-O’Reilly Galleries, New York, NY 2000 Robert De Niro, Sr.: Landscapes, Salander-O’Reilly Galleries, New York, NY

Included in Selected Works by Paul Resika, Robert De Niro, Sr., Terry St. John, and Dennis Hare, Hackett-Freedman Gallery, San Francisco, CA 2000–01 Robert De Niro, Sr., Waddington & Tribby Fine Art, Boca Raton, FL

2001 Included in Reconfiguring the New York School, Center for Figurative Painting, New York, NY

Iceland 2010 Après avoir vu Matisse: Robert De Niro, Sr. Peintures, Dessins,

Musée Matisse, Nice, France 2011 Included in Black Mountain College and Its Legacy, Loretta Howard Gallery, New York, NY

Included in Series & Sequences, DC Moore Gallery, New York, NY 2011–12 Included in The Tides of Provincetown: Pivotal Years in America’s Oldest Continuous Artist Colony 1899–2011, New Britain Museum of American Art, CT (traveling exhibition) 2012 Robert De Niro, Sr.: Paintings & Drawings, 1960–1993, DC Moore Gallery, New York, NY

Included in Matisse and the Decorative Impulse, Weatherspoon Art Museum, Greensboro, NC 2013 Included in Vases, Vessels, Cutlery, and Cloth: Selections from the Johnson Collection, Spartanburg Art Museum, SC 2014 HBO Documentary Film presentation,“Remembering the Artist: Robert

De Niro, Sr.,” directed by Perri Peltz and Geeta Gandhbir, produced by Perri Peltz, executive producers Sheila Nevins and Jane Rosenthal. Premiere at Sundance Film Festival, January and on HBO, June Robert De Niro, Sr.: Paintings & Drawings 1948–1989, DC Moore Gallery, New York, NY

SELECTED PUBLIC COLLECTIONS Ackland Art Museum, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, NC Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo, NY Arizona State University Art Museum, Tempe, AZ Arkansas Arts Center, Little Rock, AR The Baltimore Museum of Art, MD The William Benton Museum of Art, University of Connecticut, Storrs, CT Blanton Museum of Art, University of Texas at Austin, TX Brooklyn Museum, NY Richard F. Brush Art Gallery at St. Lawrence University, Canton, NY The Butler Institute of American Art, Youngstown, OH Robert De Niro, Sr., c. 1966.

Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington, DC Crocker Art Museum, Sacramento, CA Denver Art Museum, CO Everson Museum of Art, Syracuse, NY Heckscher Museum of Art, Huntington, NY Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, DC Hobart and William Smith Colleges, Geneva, NY Kresge Art Museum, Michigan State University, East Lansing, MI The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, NY Mint Museum, Charlotte, NC Montana Historical Society & Museum, Helena, MT National Academy Museum, New York, NY Neuberger Museum of Art, Purchase College, State University of New York, NY Oakland Museum of California, CA Parrish Art Museum, Water Mill, NY Provincetown Art Association and Museum, MA Rhode Island School of Design Museum, Providence, RI Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington, DC University Museum of Contemporary Art, University of Massachusetts, Amherst, MA University Art Collections, Tempe, AZ Weatherspoon Art Museum, Greensboro, NY Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, NY Yale University Art Gallery, New Haven, CT Yellowstone Art Museum, Billings, MT

SELECTED BOOKS AND CATALOGUES 1969 Robert De Niro: Seventeen Paintings, Ten Sculptures, Ten Drawings. San Francisco, CA: Reese Palley Gallery. 1972 Van Deren, Coke. The Painter and the Photograph, From Delacroix to

Warhol. Albuquerque: The University of New Mexico Press. 1975 Painterly Representation. New York, NY: Ingber Gallery. 1981 Robert De Niro, Recent Paintings and Drawings. Charlotte, NC:

The Mint Museum of Art. Robert De Niro: Drawings. Seattle, WA: Foster/White Gallery. 1984–86 Emotional Impact: New York School Figurative Expressionism. San Francisco, CA: Art Museum Association of America. 1986 Paintings and Works on Paper: Robert De Niro. London, England:

Crane Kalman Gallery. Robert De Niro: Recent Paintings and Works on Paper. New York, NY: Graham Modern Gallery. Robert De Niro: Expression as Tradition—Modern Classicism Redefined. Great Falls, MT: Paris Gibson Square Museum of Art. 1987 Vision and Tradition. Morristown, NJ: The Morris Museum and the Colby College Museum, Waterville, ME. 1990 The Provocative Years 1935–1945: The Hans Hofmann School and Its Students in Provincetown. Provincetown, MA: Provincetown Art

Association & Museum. 1995 Robert De Niro, Sr.: Paintings. New York, NY: Salander-O’Reilly

Galleries. 1996 Robert De Niro, Sr.: Drawings. New York, NY: Salander-O’Reilly

Galleries. Robert De Niro, Sr.: Charcoals, 1958–1981. New York, NY: SalanderO’Reilly Galleries. 1997 Robert De Niro, Sr.: Paintings. New York, NY: Salander-O’Reilly

Galleries. 1998 Robert De Niro, Sr.: Selected Works. San Francisco, CA: Hackett-

Freedman Gallery. 2000 Robert De Niro, Sr. San Francisco, CA: Hackett-Freedman Gallery.

Robert De Niro, Sr.: Landscapes. New York, NY: Salander-O’Reilly Galleries. 2004 Robert De Niro, Sr. New York, NY: Salander-O’Reilly Galleries. 2007 Robert De Niro, Sr. Venice, Italy: San Marco Casa D’Aste. 2008 Robert De Niro, Sr.: Summer Landscapes. New York, NY: Ameringer & Yohe Fine Art, 2008. 2012 Robert De Niro, Sr.: Paintings & Drawings, 1963–1993. New York, NY:

DC Moore Gallery. 2014 Robert De Niro, Sr.: Paintings & Drawings, 1948–1989. New York, NY:

DC Moore Gallery.

Robert De Niro, Sr. and Robert De Niro, Jr., c. 1945.

TEXTS AND POEMS BY ROBERT DE NIRO, SR 1975 “Corot, Verlaine and Greta Garbo or the Melancholy Syndrome,” Tracks, a Journal of Artistic Writings, vol. I, no. 3 (Fall), pp. 48– 49. 1976 A Fashionable Watering Place: Poems and Drawings by Robert

De Niro, San Francisco. 1977 “Artists on Degas,” Art/World, vol. I, no. 7, March, p. 11. 1980 “Boucher Reassessed,” Art/World, vol. V, no. 3, November, pp. 1, 4. 1981 “The Quiet Heart of Bonnard’s Art: Nonflamboyant Joy, Dedication,” Art/World, vol. VI, no. 3, November, pp. 1, 8. 1982 “Munch’s Morbidity,” Art/World, vol. VII, no. 3, December, pp. 1, 10.

REVIEWS 1945 Wolf, Ben. “Emotional Hangover,” Art Digest 20, October. 1946 Greenberg, Clement. “Review of Exhibitions of Max Beckmann and Robert De Niro,” The Nation, May 18.

“Reviews and Previews: Abstract Painting,” ARTnews 45, May. 1951 Hess, Thomas B. “Robert De Niro,” ARTnews 49, February.

Krasne, Belle. “Fifty-Seventh Street in Review: Robert De Niro,” Art Digest 25, February. 1953 Ashton, Dore. “Galleries: ‘52– ‘53 Flashback: Robert De Niro,” Art Digest 27, June.

McBride, Henry. “Younger Hero,” ARTnews 52, June. 1983 “De Niro on Manet,” Art/World, vol. VIII, no. 2, November, pp. 1, 8. 1984 “Robert De Niro on Soutine,” Art/World, vol. VIII, no. 4, January, pp. 1, 5, 7. 1984–85 “Two Artists View Van Gogh,” Art/World, vol. IX, no. 3, pp. 1, 9. 1985 “Rousseau’s Romanticism,” Art/World, vol. IX, no. 8, p. 8. 1991 “Brooklyn Heights,” California State Poetry Quarterly 17, no. 2 & 3, p. 19.

“Spain is Behind the Mountain,” California State Poetry Quarterly 18, no. 1 & 2, p. 45.

1955 Hess, Thomas B. “U.S. Painting: Some Recent Directions,” ARTnews Annual 25, December.

O’Hara, Frank. “Robert De Niro,” ARTnews 54, March. Sawin, Martica. “Fortnight in Review: Robert De Niro,” Art Digest 29, March. 1956 Finkelstein, Louis. “New Look: Abstract-Impressionism,” ARTnews 55,

March. Mellow, James R. “Robert De Niro,” Arts 30, June. “Up From the Frenzy,” Newsweek 48, July 9. Tyler, Parker. “Robert De Niro,” ARTnews 55, June. 1957 Sawin, Martica. “Robert De Niro,” Arts 31, March. 1958 Munro, Eleanor C. “De Niro Works on a Series of Pictures,” ARTnews 57, May.

Schuyler, James. “Robert De Niro,” ARTnews 57, November. Ventura, Anita. “Robert De Niro,” Arts 33, November. Vicente, Esteban. “Gris: Reality Cubed,” Yarnall, May. 1959 “Galleries Cross-Country: Fort Worth, Tex.” ARTnews 58, October. 1960 Burkhardt, Edith. “Robert De Niro,” ARTnews 59, Summer.

Campbell, Lawrence. “Robert De Niro,” ARTnews 59, October. Sawin, Martica. “Robert De Niro,” Arts 35, November. Tillim, Sidney. “Robert De Niro,” Arts 34, May. 1961 Fussinger, H. College Art Journal, Spring.

Petersen, Valerie. “Robert De Niro,” ARTnews 60, May. Smith, Lawrence. “Robert De Niro,” Arts 35, May. 1962 Petersen, Valerie. “Robert De Niro,” ARTnews 61, December. 1963 Campbell, Lawrence. “Five Americans Face Reality,” ARTnews 62,

September. Gruen, John. “Loners’ With High Standards,” The New York Herald Tribune, September 22. Preston, Stuart. “A Tour of Variety Fair,” The New York Times, September 22. Sawin, Martica. “Good Painting – No Label,” Arts 37, September.

1965 Benedikt, Michael. “New York Letter,” Art International 9, no. 9–10.

Berrigan, Ted. “Robert De Niro,” ARTnews 64, October. Goldin, Amy. “De Niro,” Arts 40, November. Hess, Thomas B. “Private Faces in Public Places,” ARTnews 63, February. “Robert De Niro,” Arts 39, February. 1967 Hooten, Bruce Duff. “Robert De Niro,” ARTnews 65, January. 1968 Campbell, Lawrence. “Robert De Niro,” ARTnews 67, Summer.

Frackman, Noel. “Robert De Niro,” Arts 42, Summer. 1970 Edgar, Natalie. “Robert De Niro,” ARTnews 69, April.

Magarowicz, J. “De Niro at Zabriskie,” Arts 44, April. 1971 De Niro, Robert. Art Now: New York, statement and color plate. 1976 Hess, Thomas B. “Warhol and De Niro, Honesty is the Best Policy,” New York, December 6.

Tallmer, Jerry. “Robert De Niro the Painter,” New York Post, December 4.

Robert De Niro, Sr. in his studio, 1980s.

1977 Adams, Sam. “The Painter’s Painter,” Flightime, January.

Herrera, Hayden. “Robert De Niro at Poindexter,” Art in America, May/June. Rosenthal, Deborah. “Robert De Niro,” Arts 51, February. 1978 Politeo, Lisa. “Painting Hurt by Commercialization,” The Daily Californian, August 4.

Rohrer, Judith. “Robert De Niro’s Figures and Landscapes,” Art Week, April 29. Workman, Andrea. “Robert De Niro: New York Painter with Bay Area Sensibility,” West Art, April. 1979 Dickman, Sharon. “Painter Robert De Niro Pierces Space with Color, Real Images,” The Evening Sun Accent, April 18.

Edgar, Natalie. “Robert De Niro Paintings,” Art/World, May 18/ June 18. 1980 Ashbery, John.“Looking Good on Paper,” New York, June 30.

French-Frazier, Nina. “A New York Letter: Robert De Niro,” Art International 24, no. 1– 2, September/October. Hale, Nick. “Battle Between Realism and Abstraction Stilled,” Art/World 4, no. 10, Summer. Raynor, Vivien. “Robert De Niro,” The New York Times, June 27. 1982 Mathew, Ray. “De Niro’s Promise,” Art/World 6, no. 6, February 22 / March 22.

Raynor, Vivien. “Robert De Niro,” The New York Times, February 26. Sawin, Martica. “Robert De Niro: A Fragrance of Place,” Arts 56, March. Smith, Roberta. “Misplaced Attention,” The Village Voice, March 2. 1984 Campbell, Lawrence. “Robert De Niro at Graham Modern,” Art in

America, September.

Robert De Niro, Sr. in his studio, 1980s.

Jay, Eric. “Robert De Niro, Graham Modern,” ARTnews 83, Summer. Mathew, Ray. “Robert De Niro,” Arts 58, May. Ruhe, Barnaby. “De Niro’s Authenticity Sudden Confrontation,” Art/World 8, no. 6, March/April. 1985 Batt, John. Art New England, Art Center at Hargate, St. Paul’s

School Exhibition. Brenson, Michael. “Annual Exhibition at National Academy of Design,” The New York Times, February 15. 1986 Hughes, Graham. “Robert De Niro and Paul Resika at Crane Kalman,”

Arts Review, March.

Sobisch, Pablo. “Robert De Niro, el pintor,” Guía del Ocio, Madrid, April 19. Úrcolo, Eduardo. “El otro Robert De Niro,” Tribuna, Madrid, April 8. 2003 Cohen, David. “Gallery-Going,” The New York Sun, August 14. 2005 Cohen, David. “Student and Master,” The New York Sun, January.

Kramer, Hilton. “Paint Brushes Full, Robert De Niro, Sr. Really Thought Big,” New York Observer, March 7. Panero, James. “Gallery Chronicle,” The New Criterion, vol. 23, no. 6. 2007 Panero, James. “Mystical Mediator: Re-examining the Legacy of

Robert De Niro, Sr.,” Art & Antiques, September.

Langer, Sandra. “Harmonious Imagination: Paintings by Robert De Niro,” Arts 60, May.

2009 Turner, Christopher. “An Elegant Mind,” Modern Painter, Summer.

Matlock, David. “De Niro’s Paintings,” Art/World, vol. 10, no. 6.

2010 Goodman, Lanie. “Art by De Niro, Sr., After Seeing Matisse,” WSJ.com, March 26.

Mullaly, Terrance. “Americans Out of the Mold: De Niro and Resika,” The Daily Telegraph, April 2.

2011 Darida, Ioan and Dana Postolache, “A ‘Master’ of His Time,” Arcolmag.

1988 Silver, Joanne. “De Niro Showing Sizzles with Color,” The Boston Herald, July 1. 1992 Zimmer, William. “Memorabilia and Painting From Black Mountain’s Glory Days,” The New York Times, April 19. 1995 Arts and Leisure Guide, “Robert De Niro, Sr.,” The New York Times Times (Arts and Leisure Guide), January 1.

Campbell, Lawrence. "Robert De Niro, Sr., at Salander-O’Reilly,” Art in America, July. Karmel, Pepe. “Robert De Niro, Sr.,” The New York Times, January 20. Schjeldahl, Peter. “Fruit and Turpentine,” The Village Voice, January 31.

Landi, Ann. “De Niro Jr. on De Niro Sr.,” ARTnews 110, January. 2012 “DC Moore opens first exhibition as the exclusive representative of the Estate of Robert De Niro, Sr.,” ArtDaily.org, March 27.

Rosboch, Lili. “Dale Earnhardt Jr. Jr., De Niro, Political Giraffe: NYC Weekend.” Bloomberg.com, March 30. Smith, Roberta. “Robert De Niro Sr.: Paintings and Drawings, 1960–1993,” The New York Times, April 19. —————. “Museum and Gallery Listings,” The New York Times, April 27.

Stoodley, Sheila Gibson. “Artist Robert De Niro Sr.’s Art on Display in New York.” RobbReport.com, March 26.

1997 “Robert De Niro at Salander-O’Reilly,” The New Yorker, February 10. 1998 Bonetti, David. “De Niro Sr.’s Work at Hackett Freedman,” San Francisco Examiner, October 12.

Jacobsen, Kay Marie. “Art: De Niro, the Painter,” San Francisco Chronicle Online, November 8–14. 1999 Dickey, Christopher. “The Second Time Around,” Newsweek, May 31.

Kimmelman, Michael. “Art Club: Twenty Years of Superstars and Shooting Stars,” The New York Times Magazine, October 24. “Periscope: De Niro’s Dad,” Newsweek, May 17. 2000 Bonetti, David. “De Niro’s Wonderful Way in Color,” San Francisco

Examiner, October. Naves, Mario. “The Loaded Brush of Robert De Niro, Sr.,” The New York Observer, January 24. 2002 Chacón, Francisco. “Robert De Niro ‘beautiza’ en Madrid la pintura de su padre,” El Mundo, Madrid, April 7.

Fernandez, Victor. “Robert De Niro visita la capital para presentar la pintura de su padre,” La Razon, Madrid, April 7. Mora, Miguel. “De Niro hijo presenta a De Niro padre,” El Pais, Madrid, April 7.

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Published on the occasion of the exhibition

Robert De Niro, Sr.: Paintings & Drawings 1948 –1989 DC Moore Gallery, June 6 – July 11, 2014 The Estate of Robert De Niro, Sr. is represented by DC Moore Gallery

Catalogue © DC Moore Gallery, 2014. The Intoxication of Color © Robert Kushner, 2014 Robert De Niro Works on a Series of Pictures by Eleanor C. Munro © 1958, ARTnews, LLC, May. Images courtesy of the Estate of Rudy Burckhardt/Artists Rights Society, New York ISBN 978 - 0 - 9896416 - 6 -1

Publications Manager: Andrea Cerbie; Editing: SNAP Editions; Design: Joseph Guglietti; Printing: Brilliant Graphics; Photography: All photography © Steven Bates unless otherwise noted; page © 3 Private Collection; pages 19 & 37 © Brilliant Graphics; pages 40–43 © The Estate of Rudy Burchkardt/Artists Rights Society, New York; pages 44–50 © The Estate of Robert De Niro, Sr.; page 47 (bottom) © Zabriskie Gallery, New York. All artwork by Robert De Niro, Sr. © The Estate of Robert De Niro, Sr./Artists Rights Society, New York.

cover: Birdcage, Two Vases and Flowers, 1981 (detail). Oil on linen, 40 x 30 inches inside front cover: Untitled (Still Life with Classical Head), 1960 (detail ). Oil on linen, 36 x 54 inches opposite: Still Life with Vase of Flowers, Lemons, Chair and Guitar, 1989 (detail). Oil on linen, 34 x 40 inches