Obituaries - Artworld - Obituary

Andrew Forge, 78, painter, author and Yale dean, died Sept. 4 of an aortic aneurysm in New Milford, Conn. The English-born painter began his career as a realist before developing an abstract style in the '60s based on the works of Monet, Seurat and Rothko. Using thousands of small dots and dashes of paint, he created luminous canvases that played with viewers' perception. Forge taught at the Slade School and Goldsmiths in London in the 1950s and '60s. He moved to the U.S. in 1972 and taught at Cooper Union and the New York Studio School, before joining the faculty of Yale in 1975 as dean and professor of the school of art. He served as dean until 1983, and retired from the university in 1994. He published books on Paul Klee and Robert Rauschenberg, and co-authored others on Monet and Degas, and received a Guggenheim Fellowship in 1980. A retrospective of his work was held at the Yale Center for British Art in 1996.

Stuart Morgan, 54, art critic and editor, died Aug. 28 in London. He studied literature at Southampton and Sussex Universities before his interest turned to contemporary art. In the 1970s, he began writing essays on American artists such as Dennis Oppenheim and Robert Smithson for Artscribe, which was then a newly founded magazine. He began writing at a time when contemporary art was not well received in Britain, and he often focused on artists outside the U.K. In the late '80s, he became the editor of Artscribe and built up its international coverage. Under his direction, the magazine expanded its readership and published lively art coverage, interviews with artists and theoretical essays. After that magazine changed hands and he lost his job, Morgan became an advisor for Frieze magazine when it was launched in 1991. In 1996, he edited a selection of writings by John Coplans, the co-founder and, for a time, editor of Artforum, a publication for which Morgan also wrote. Morgan made a name for himself as a curator as well. In 1985, he organized Louise Bourgeois's first British solo exhibition, at the Serpentine Gallery; in 1995, he co-curated, with Frances Morris, "Rites of Passage" for the Tate Gallery. What the Butler Saw, a collection of his essays and interviews, was published in 1996; a second collection, Inclinations, is due out soon.

Carol Haerer, 69, painter, died of ovarian cancer July 20 in Bennington, Vt. An abstract artist whose work ranged from atmospheric, perceptually oriented canvases to dramatic, quasi-expressionist works, Haerer was always acutely sensitive to the light, landscapes and culture of locales she visited and lived in. Her exhibition career began in Paris in the mid-1950s and she subsequently lived and worked in Patzcuaro, Mexico; Berkeley, Calif.; New York City and Hoosick Falls in upstate New York. Her best-known works are the "White Paintings," created between 1966 and 1976. Partly inspired by the skies of New Mexico, they offer the viewer mottled fields of pale colors that slowly resolve into distinct structures. In recent years, Haerer had solo shows at the Sheldon Memorial Art Galleries at the University of Nebraska and the Mitchell Algus Gallery, New York. Her work was included in two Whitney Annuals (1969, '71) and a three-person show at Artists Space (1990), and is in numerous public collections, including the Whitney, Guggenheim and Brooklyn museums. She received a Guggenheim Fellowship, an NEA Grant and a Fulbright Scholarship, and taught at a number of schools, including Bennington College.

Dolores Olmedo, 88, art patron of Diego Rivera and Frida Kahlo, died of a heart attack on July 27 in Mexico City. In 1994, she converted her Mexico City home into a museum, the Museo Dolores Olmedo Patino, to display her collection of 137 works by Rivera and 25 by Frida Kahlo. Olmedo met Rivera when she was 17, and he in his 40s. He asked her to model for him and her mother consented, not knowing that she would be posing nude. Rivera gave Olmedo the 27 drawings he made of her, which, years later, her husband forced her to return to the artist. In the 1950s, divorced and wealthy from her real-estate business, she helped care for the dying Rivera; he returned those same drawings to her. She also posed for a 1955 painting in which he depicted her wearing the native dress commonly associated with Kahlo. An avid fan of Rivera's work, Olmedo said she purchased works by Kahlo, of whom she was openly dismissive, only at Rivera's behest. She paid a mere $1,600 for the group of Kahlo paintings, yet today they form the most significant private collection of the artist's work. Grateful for her assistance before his death, Rivera gave her numerous of his and Kahlo's works and designated her to administer both artists' estates.

Fumio Yoshimura, 76, sculptor, died on July 23 from pancreatic cancer in Manhattan. He was known for his detailed and delicate wooden replicas of plants, machines and ordinary objects, from tomato plants to sewing machines, carved from white linden wood. He took months to complete his more elaborate pieces, like a full-size hot dog cart. His sculptures are in the collections of such institutions as the Philadelphia Museum, the Norton Museum in West Palm Beach and the Hood Museum at Dartmouth College, where he taught for 11 years.