Obituaries - Art world - Frank Moore - Paul Georges - Harvey Quaytman - Hans Heinrich Thyssen-Bornemisza - Henk Geel - Brief Article - Obituary

Art in America, June, 2002 by Stephanie Cash, David Ebony

Frank Moore, 48, painter, died of AIDS on Apr. 21 in Manhattan. He is best known for his meticulously detailed, epic realist canvases packed with political content, for which he made frames that are integral to the work. He produced numerous pieces that are bitter indictments of the health-care system and the pharmaceutical industry. Moore was HIV-positive for almost 20 years. A sense of futility and desperation in the search for a cure is evident in many of his works, such as Wizard (1994), which shows a scientist picking his way through a landscape littered with pills, vials, burning coffins and dying patients. Beacon (2001) shows a patient floating on a hospital bed in the ocean as a distant lighthouse shines a beam of light containing DNA. Moore was also an environmentalist who strongly believed in the link between human health and the environment. Some of his works focused on the dangers of genetically engineered crops. Yosemite (1993) depicts the ravaging of the national park for commercial gain. Moore's first solo show was at the Clocktower gallery in 1983. He showed with Paula Allen from 1988 to `90 and has exhibited regularly with Sperone Westwater since 1993. Moore was one of the first members of the activist group Visual AIDS, which launched the Red Ribbon Project in 1990. He was included in the 1995 Whitney Biennial and won an award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters in 1999. A traveling exhibition of his work opens June 9 at the Orlando Museum of Art. A monograph, published by Twin Palms Press, was released in May.

Paul Georges, 78, figurative painter, died Apr. 17 in Normandy, France, of a heart attack. In the late `40s and early `50s, he studied with Hans Hofmann in Province-town, Mass., and Fernand Leger in Paris. Best known for his large-scale allegorical canvases, lush landscapes and flower paintings, and mocking self-portraits, he stubbornly clung to his figurative style throughout his long career in the face of contrary trends. Possessed of a gruff and blustery personality, Georges was alternately rejected and embraced by critics and the art public over his subject matter and style. His satirical streak got him into trouble in 1975 when he was sued for libel by artists Anthony Siani and Jacob Silberman. In Mugging of the Muse (1974), Georges had depicted these artists as masked, knife-brandishing attackers confronting an almost nude woman and a putto. Georges lost the case in 1980, but the decision was overturned two years later. Over the years he showed with Tibor de Nagy and Allan Frumkin in New York. He recently had solo shows in New York at Salander-O'Reilly and the Center for Figurative Painting [see A.i.A., Jan. `01].

Harvey Quaytman, 64, painter known for powerful, spare abstractions that juxtapose large monochrome geometric forms, died of cancer at his home in New York on Apr. 8. Born in Far Rockaway, N.Y., Quaytman studied at the Boston Museum School and Tufts University. Inspired by Mondrian and Malevich, he adopted a reductivist style that he explored throughout his career. He often favored cruciform shapes and muted, earthy colors to which he frequently added rust. His solo debut took place in London in 1962, the first of some 60 one-person exhibitions. In New York, he showed with Paula Cooper in the 1970s and more recently at McKee. The American Academy of Arts and Letters presented him with an award in 1997.

Baron Hans Heinrich Thyssen-Bornemisza, 81, Swiss industrialist, collector and museum founder, died of a heart attack in Madrid on Apr. 27. The son of a German banker, shipping magnate and art collector, he was born in Holland and grew up in Lugano, Switzerland, and England. He began to collect in the early 1960s and, unlike his father, took an interest in modernist works, which he hung in his home, the Villa Favorita in Lugano. Eventually, he amassed one of Europe's largest and most important private collections, featuring artists ranging from Titian and Velazquez to Picasso and Kandinsky. He was also one of the first Europeans to collect American art in depth, assembling major pieces by Copley, Homer, Hopper, Pollock and many others.

In the 1970s, the baron opened his villa to the public. It became a popular attraction, but when the Swiss government refused to pay for an expansion, he sought to move the collection elsewhere. With the help of his fourth wife, Carmen (Tita) Cervera, a former Miss Spain, he decided to move a major portion of his holdings--some 830 works--to Madrid. The Spanish government offered to refurbish a 19th-century palace near the Prado, which was renamed the Thyssen-Bornemisza Museum; a renovated 14th-century monastery outside Barcelona houses other pieces from the collection.

The transfer of the works to Spain in 1988 did not go smoothly. It was initially assumed by many that the art was a gift to the nation; then the baron came under attack in the international press when he decided to charge the Spanish government a $5-million annual rental fee for the works. Five years later a similar public outcry arose when he sold the collection to Spain for $350 million. The sum, however, is substantially less than the value of the collection, which many experts believe to be around $2 billion. The museum is now one of Spain's top tourist attractions. With a diminished collection, the Thyssen-Bornemisza Foundation in Lugano remains in place, although it is closed to the public for repairs through 2002.