"From the Estate" | Robert Gordy

Robert Gordy

From the Estate

In collaboration with the New Orleans Museum of Art, the Arthur Roger Gallery is pleased to present an exhibition of paintings by Robert Gordy. The exhibition will be on view at Arthur Roger@434, located at 434 Julia Street, from January 5–January 26, 2019. The gallery will host an opening reception, Saturday, January 5 from 6–8 pm.

Robert Gordy is considered one of the most original and creative Southern painters of the twentieth century. His unfortunate death from AIDS in 1986 at the age of 52 was an enormous loss.

The paintings in this exhibition, on both canvas and masonite, feature never-before-exhibited pieces including a series of paintings that the artist painted in high school.

Robert Gordy achieved far more beyond exquisite compositional patterning of forms – a technique self-described as “knitting” – and sensitivity to layers of color nuance. Perceptive art critics noted that in this period Robert Gordy invigorated his formalism through careful interest and attention to the French Symbolist-Surrealist tradition. Even in this “aesthetic phase” Gordy had a penchant for emotional release that would surface fully in his later riveting monotypes. In the works prior to 1982, there are often intense emotional realities beneath the apparent calm of the marvelous paintings and drawings.