| Larry Rivers | ||
| Birth Date: August 17, 1923 |
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| Death Date: August 14, 2002 Artist Gallery |
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| Born in 1923 in New York City, Larry Rivers turned to painting in 1945 after studying music at the Julliard School and pursuing a career as a musician. He studied with Hans Hoffmann from 1947 to 1948.
On 1940, Yitzroch Loiza Grossberg changed his name to Larry Rivers when one night his group was introduced as "Larry Rivers and the Mudcats," he decided to keep the name and began a career as a jazz saxophonist in New York City.
After a brief period in the army during World War II, Rivers attended Julliard School of Music for one year before returning to the jazz saxophone. His first exposure to art was when a fellow musician showed him a painting of a bass fiddle by George Braque. By 1945, Rivers began painting. Rivers explored figurative work and was include towards the culturally provocative. He was one of the first artists to include popular images (Pop art movement) and then lettering and photography in his paintings.
It appears Rivers lived life to the fullest. He was married twice, had a relationship with a young painter later in life, and had five children – four biological and one adopted. He designed sets and costumes for the theatre, collaborated with poets, traveled to Europe, Africa, Sweden, Russian, and the Dominican Republic, was a documentary filmmaker and professor at the University of California. For much of his career, Rivers was seen by observers and critics as a revolutionary deliberately opposing prevailing movements for the thrill of challenging the status quo.
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