2003 in review: obituaries

Art in America, August, 2004

Mario Merz, 78, a central figure in the Arte Povera movement, known for his "igloos" made from various materials. He won a $125,000 Praemium Imperiale in 2003.

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Richard Wollheim, 80, British-born philosopher and art historian credited with coining the term "Minimalism." He taught at Columbia University in New York and at U.C.-Berkeley, among others.

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Gerrit Henry, 52, poet, critic, A.i.A. contributor and former senior editor at the Print Collector's Newsletter, A champion of figurative painting, he also published several books of poetry.

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Billy Kluver, 76, scientist, engineer and writer who collaborated with artists such as Tinguely and Rauschenberg. In 1966, he co-founded Experiments in Art and Technology.

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Fred Sandback, 59, Minimalist artist who made site-specific installations using colored yarn, string and wire. Months before his death, he presented works at the new Dia:Beacon facility.

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Pierre Restany, 72, French critic who championed artists such as Klein, Thiguely and Arman, whom he dubbed the Nouveaux Realistes. He was a regular contributor to the Italian magazine Domus.

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Ibram Lassaw, 90, sculptor known for his weblike welded-metal structures. In 1936 he co-founded the American Abstract Artists group and served as its president from 1946 to '49.

Jess, 80, artist and poet whose intricate collages combine elements of art and literary history. He was the subject of a traveling exhibition organized by the Albright Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo, in 1993-94.

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Dorothy Miller, 99, for 30 years a pioneering curator at MOMA, where she mounted a series of landmark shows (1942-63) introducing 90 contemporary American artists.

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Robert Blackburn, 82, master printmaker who advanced the field of abstract color lithography. He established the Printmaking Workshop in 1948, and received a MacArthur Foundation fellowship in 1992.

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Gordon Onslow Ford, 90, British-born Surrealist whose mystical paintings reflect his interest in Zen Buddhism. He had retrospectives at the San Francisco Museum of Art (1948) and the Oakland Museum (1978).

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Jack Goldstein, 57, artist known for his experimental work in film, sound and performance. A survey of his films and performances was held in 2002 at the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York.

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Kirk Varnedoe, 57, chief curator of painting and sculpture at MOMA for 14 years, and the scholar at Princeton's Institute for Advanced Study (2001-08). He was awarded a MacArthur Foundation fellowship in 1984.

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John Coplans, 83, artist, museum director and editor who co-founded Artforum. More recently, he was known for his large-scale, close-up photographs of his aging body.

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Wally Hedrick, 75, Beat-generation and Funk artist whose work ranges from abstract canvases to assemblages of urban debris. He was awarded NEA fellowships in 1968, 1982 and 1993-94.

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Colin de Land, 47, New York art dealer who ran several innovative galleries, most recently American Fine Arts. He and his wife, the late Pat Hearn were co-founders of the Gramercy Art Fair, now the Armory Show.

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