Robert De Niro, Sr. Paintings & Drawings 1948-1989

http://www.dcmooregallery.com/exhibitions

By the early 1950s, Robert De Niro, Sr. (1922-1993) had arrived at his boldly expressive mode of painting. Through strong color and reductive shapes, he merged aspects of abstraction and representation in figure paintings, still lifes, and landscapes. DC Moore Gallery is pleased to present an exhibition of his vibrant art, featuring paintings and drawings from 1948-1989. A catalogue with an essay by Robert Kushner will be available. It will also include an article on the artist by Eleanor Munro and photographs by Rudy Burckhardt that first appeared in ARTnews in May 1958. Characterized by his use of color, gesture, and movement, De Niro’s art is grounded in the act of painting and drawing, bridging European modernism, especially French, with Abstract Expressionism. He also often referenced European masters from Delacroix to Matisse. With his extensive knowledge of art history, De Niro sought to maintain the tradition of representational painting that was under attack by the tide of abstraction championed by many artist and critics in the 1950s. By no means a traditionalist, though, De Niro followed his own uncompromising vision of emphatic painterliness and personal experimentation. HBO Documentary Film, REMEMBERING THE ARTIST ROBERT DE NIRO, SR., is a portrait of the esteemed figurative painter which includes interviews with the art historians and critics, Robert Storr and Irving Sandler, and with the man who knew him best: his son. In intimate conversation, Robert De Niro, Jr. profiles an artist whose talent went largely unrecognized as the pop art movement swept the nation in the 1960s, and looks at the relationship between a father and son. An official selection of the 2014 Sundance Film Festival, the film debuts on HBO on June 9.