RIVERS, LARRY

Larry Rivers (August 17, 1923 New York City – August 2002 New York City) was a artist, musician, occasional actor and filmmaker.
He is considered one of the founding fathers of Pop Art.

Rivers was born in the Bronx as Yitzhok Loiza Grossberg. As a jazz saxophonist, he appeared in New York City from 1940 to 1945, and during this time took up his artistic name Larry Rivers. He studied at the Juilliard School of Music from 1945 to 1946.

From 1947 to 1948 he studied at the Hans Hofmann School and then from 1949 to 1951 at New York University.

Early on, Rivers felt connected to abstract expressionism, but began with figurative painting in the late 1940s. From the beginning of the 1950s, he also worked as a sculptor and made sculptures made of plaster, metal and cement.

The artistic works with assemblages with mass articles such as packaging or bank notes from the mid-1950s onwards made Rivers a pioneer of pop art and got the nickname “the godfather of pop art”.

In the 1970s Larry Rivers worked with aerosol cans and airbrush and turned to the media video and film.