Obituaries - Eugene Leroy, Stanley Boxer, Gunther Gerzso, Annalee Newman, Kermit Lansner, George Morrison - Obituary

Art in America, July, 2000 by Stephanie Cash, David Ebony

Eugene Leroy, 90, French painter, died May 10 in Wasquehal, a suburb of Lille. Equally fascinated by the human figure and the materiality of oil paint, Leroy created dense compositions in which glimmers of imagery can be made out amid thick incrustations of pigment. Using patient accumulation and a startling mix of bright and murky colors, Leroy would sometimes continue to work on a painting for up to a decade. In recent years, his most frequent subject was his wife, Marina, although he also worked from still-life and landscape motifs. Although he never achieved great fame, Leroy, who continued to paint until the end of his long life, enjoyed growing international respect. He was given retrospectives at the Stedelijk van Abbemuseum in Eindhoven, Holland (1988), and the Musee d'Art Moderne et d'Art Contemporain in Nice (1993). His work was included in the Sao Paulo Bienal (1991) and Documenta IX (1992). He recently had a solo show at the Albright-Knox Art Gallery in Buffalo and regularly exhibited paintings at the New York galleries of Michael Werner and Edward Thorp.

Stanley Boxer, 73, painter and sculptor, died on May 8 of cancer in Pittsfield, Mass. He studied at the Art Students League and began to exhibit in 1953. After a long gallery affiliation with Tiber de Nagy, he showed at Andre Emmerich from 1975 to '93. Boxer is perhaps best known for richly textured abstract canvases, championed by critic Clement Greenberg. Museum shows of Boxer's work were mounted by the Boston Museum of Fine Arts in 1977 and the Rose Art Museum, Brandeis University, in 1992. His most recent gallery exhibition was held last year at Salander-O'Reilly in New York.

Gunther Gerzso, 84, painter and sculptor, died at his home in Mexico City on Apr. 20. The Mexican-born Gerzso was educated in Switzerland and upon returning to his homeland began a career as a set designer. He worked on numerous films, including major productions by directors John Ford, John Huston and Luis Bunuel, who introduced him to a number of expatriate European Surrealists then residing in Mexico. Gerzso's earliest paintings, from the 1940s, were Surrealist-tinged abstractions, but he soon developed a distinctive sytle featuring hard-edge geometric forms inspired by pre-Columbian architecture. In 1995, a survey of his paintings and sculptures at Mary-Anne Martin Fine Art in New York coincided with a retrospective of his graphic work at the Americas Society.

Annalee Newman, 91, widow of prominent New York School painter Barnett Newman, died in Manhattan on May 8. The two met in New York City in the 1930s when both were teaching in the public schools; they were married in 1936. They formed a famously inseparable couple, and were conspicuous participants in the social and professional life of the New York art world.

Annalee Greenhouse was born in Palestine in 1909; she grew up in Ohio, went to Hunter College, did graduate study in French at Columbia and earned a diplome superieure from the University of Nancy. Lively and opinionated, she was a formidable counterpart to her jolly, contentious, cerebral spouse. She was also a powerful factor in Newman's eventual artistic success, which was not achieved easily or soon. When, in the late '40s, he turned his full energies to painting, Annalee supported them both on her high-school teacher's salary. Life was hard for some years; while Newman was respected as an intellectual and polemicist (his writings helped articulate the Abstract-Expressionists' position), his painting was misunderstood.

Always a participant in Newman's late-night talk fests, Annalee would rise at dawn and set forth to her job in Queens, where she taught secretarial studies and was an expert in shorthand. She also lectured for some years at the Baruch School of City College. She led her strenuous double life without comment or complaint. She often helped Newman in the studio, typed up his writings, took care of the modest household on West End Avenue and maintained a meticulous archive of his works. She did not retire from teaching until 1964.

Though Newman's paintings began to sell in the late '50s, it would be some time before the couple attained prosperity. Newman's aims as a painter were somewhat different from those of his New York School contemporaries. He more fully came into his own in the '60s as the work of younger artists created a new climate for radical abstraction. Newman was suddenly both mentor and father-figure, much admired by leaders of the new generation to whom he, in turn, offered encouragement, support and friendship.

After Barnett Newman's sudden death in 1970, Annalee devoted the next 30 years to placing his works, many of which were still held by the estate, in important public and private collections. She moved to a large apartment in River House on East 52nd Street in Manhattan where she lived amid a group of Newman's paintings that hung in tall, coolly daylit rooms; the now-immense archive was down the hall and still growing. In the early '80s she established the Barnett Newman Foundation, which maintains his archive and library. The foundation commissioned Yve-Alain Bois to write a catalogue raisonne, due in 2001; other publications are in preparation.