Ralph Humphrey (April 14, 1932 – July 14, 1990) was an American abstract painter whose work has been linked to both Abstract Expressionism and Minimalism.[1][2] He was active in the New York art scene in the 1960s and '70s. His paintings are best summarized as an exploration of space through color and structure. He lived and worked in New York, NY.
He is not to be confused with the percussionist Ralph Humphrey, best known for being the drummer of The Mothers of Invention from 1973 until 1974.
Biography
Ralph Humphrey studied at Youngstown State University.[1] He moved to New York in 1957 and immediately became a part of the art scene that was known, at the time, for Abstract Expressionism.[1] He met artists such as Mark Rothko, Theodoros Stamos, Frank Stella, Robert Ryman, and Ellsworth Kelly, who would end up having a large influence on his work.[3] Humphrey was a prominent member of the generation of artists who laid the groundwork for American art in the 1970s and 60s.[1] From 1966 until his death in 1990, he taught painting in the graduate department at Hunter College.
Artistic style
Humphrey's artistic style went through several phases and developments, which can be roughly outlined in the following way: monochromes from 1957 to 1960; frame paintings 1961–65; shaped canvases 1967–70; constructed paintings 1971–1990.[4] Throughout these phases, Humphrey kept a keen eye on color, light, and space while he moved between abstraction and representation. As Kenneth Baker explains in Art in America in 1984, “Each of his works defines an ideal viewing distance that can be discovered only by patient observation of the focus of the details, the resolution of the image and the proper relationship between body and object. Finding the apt distance from which to contemplate Humphrey’s new paints is thus not something you do discursively: it is an exercise in feeling your way silently towards a correct spatial interval.” [3]
1957–1960
Reviewing Humphrey's show at Tibor de Nagy in 1960, Donald Judd said, of his monochromes, “They are large, subtle and single-colored. This is Purism of a sort, in which generality does not contain variables but excludes them, in which the basic diagram or color, the only continuity, is exposed, here the essence of a confused sequence of perceptions.”[5] Donald Judd also likened these canvases to the work of Kazimir Malevich, Piet Mondrian, and Josef Albers.
1961–1965
Neil A. Levine wrote in 1965 about Humphrey's solo exhibition at Green Gallery, where he showed some of his frame paintings. Levine said, “His new work is serious and demanding. All the paintings are variations on one theme. The theme is, simply stated, an expansive, lightly brushed, large grey field…surrounded by a painted framing edge…”[6] Here, Neil, too, references Albers, as well as TV screens, unfilled billboards, and Rothko.[6]
1967–1970
Robert Pincus-Whitten reviewed Humphrey's 1969 show at Bykert Gallery, where his shaped canvases were hung. Pincus-Whitten explains how Humphrey created “a luminous cosmos of fragile exhalations, painted on large squares or horizontal rectangles, softly turned at the corner and curved back into the stretcher.”[7] These canvases are noteworthy, too, for their use of day-glow colors. At this time, his work becomes increasingly more atmospheric than his previous efforts; multi-colored wavy lines and sprayed colors replace solid geometric fields of single colors.
1971–1990
The last definable phase of his artistic style approaches representation at times, sometimes calling to mind an open window. These constructed paintings also border on sculpture, often coming ten inches out from the wall, directly confronting the viewer in real space. The paint, too, is considerably built up, giving the surface of the paintings considerable texture that was not previously seen in his work. Ellen Schwartz writes in 1977 about his show at John Weber, where his constructed paintings were still abstract: “Humphrey’s latest works, meditative rather than communicative, require the suspension of conscious efforts to grasp them before they will yield their secrets, which lay within ourselves all the while. The rich blue variegated surfaces are like blotters onto which we pour our own fantasies.”[8] D Phillips, writing about his Willard Gallery show in 1982, explains how his constructed paintings are natural extensions of the earlier frame paintings: “Frames-within-frames have long provided the structural basis for Humphrey’s colorful designs; he has simply made his window allusion literal.” She explains, too, that these paintings are a step forward: “The shift does, however, bring greater variety and complexity to the artist’s constructions. There is a more explicit sense of space, of indoors and outdoors.”[9] Beyond content, we see Humphrey using a brighter color palette and inserting vaguely figurative, whimsical patterns onto the surface.[3] Yet, by the mid 1980s, the paintings return to a more ambiguous, abstract state.[3]
Exhibitions
Since his first solo exhibition at the Tibor de Nagy Gallery in New York City in 1959, Humphrey's work has been the subject of 40 solo shows. During his lifetime, he had been represented by Green Gallery, Bykert Gallery, Andre Emmerich Gallery, Willard Gallery, and John Weber Gallery.[1]
Solo exhibitions have continued to be mounted since his death in 1990, including Ralph Humphrey: Frame Paintings, 1964 to 1965 at Mary Boone Gallery, New York City, September 8–October 6, 1990 and Ralph Humphrey: Conveyance at Gary Snyder Gallery, April 2 – May 16, 2015.[10][11] Other exhibitions have been held elsewhere in New York, San Francisco, Los Angeles, and Boston.
Ralph Humphrey: Paintings, 1975–1982, Daniel Weinberg Gallery, Los Angeles, October 6–30
1983
Ralph Humphrey: Selected Paintings, Daniel Weinberg Gallery, Los Angeles, May 14 – June 11
1984
Delahunty Gallery, Dallas
Ralph Humphrey, Willard Gallery, New York, April 7 – May 12[48]
1985
Ralph Humphrey: Recent Paintings, Daniel Weinberg Gallery, Los Angeles, October 16 – November 2
1987
Ralph Humphrey, Jay Gorney Modern Art, New York, January–February[49][50]
1990
Ralph Humphrey: 1990, Mary Boone Gallery, New York, March 3–31[51]
Ralph Humphrey: Frame Paintings, 1964 to 1965, Mary Boone Gallery, New York, September 8–October 6[10][52]
Ralph Humphrey: A Retrospective View, 1954–1990, Daniel Weinberg Gallery, Los Angeles, November 8– December 5
1991
Ralph Humphrey: The Late Paintings on Paper, Bertha and Karl Leubsdorf Art Gallery, Hunter College, City University of New York, September 19 – October 26
Ralph Humphrey: Paintings, 1975–1985, John Berggruen Gallery, San Francisco, October–November
1996
Ralph Humphrey: Selected Paintings, Daniel Weinberg Gallery, San Francisco, August 17 – October 17
1998
Ralph Humphrey, Danese Gallery, New York, January 16 – February 14
2000
Ralph Humphrey: Early Paintings, 1957–1967, Daniel Weinberg Gallery, Los Angeles, November 1 – December 9
2001
Ralph Humphrey: Later Paintings, 1975–1982, Daniel Weinberg Gallery, Los Angeles, April 5 – May 26
2008
Ralph Humphrey: Selected Works from the Estate, Nielsen Gallery, Boston, May 17 – June 14
Ralph Humphrey: Selected Paintings, 1957–1980, Daniel Weinberg Gallery, Los Angeles, May 31 – June 28[53]
2012
Ralph Humphrey, Gary Snyder Gallery, New York, September 13 – October 27[11][54]
2015
Ralph Humphrey: Conveyance, Garth Greenan Gallery, New York, April 2–May 16[55]
1969 Annual Exhibition: Contemporary American Painting, Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, December 16, 1969 – February 1, 1970[64]
1970–1971
Color and Field, 1890–1970, Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo, September 15 – November 1, 1970; Dayton Art Institute, Ohio, November 20, 1970 – January 10, 1971; Cleveland Museum of Art, February 4–March 28, 1971[65]
Art of the Decade, 1960–1970: Paintings from the Collections of Greater Detroit, University Art Gallery, Oakland University, Rochester, Michigan, November 14–December 17[67]
A Group Show Selected by Klaus Kertess, Texas Gallery, Houston, September 15 – October 11
Douglas Drake Gallery, Kansas City, Missouri
1975–1976
Painting, Drawing, and Sculpture of the ’60s and ’70s from the Dorothy and Herbert Vogel Collection, Institute of Contemporary Art, Philadelphia, October 7–November 18, 1975; Contemporary Arts Center, Cincinnati, December 17, 1975 – February 15, 1976
’75, ’76, ’77: Painting, Part I, Sarah Lawrence College Art Gallery, Bronxville, New York, February 19–March 10; American Foundation for the Arts, Miami, April–May; Contemporary Arts Center, Cincinnati, June–July
A View of a Decade, Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago, September 10–November 10
Late Twentieth Century Art from the Sydney and Frances Lewis Foundation, Anderson Gallery, Virginia Commonwealth University, Richmond, December 5, 1978 – January 9, 1979; Institute of Contemporary Art, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, *March 22 – May 2, 1979
New Work, New York: Newcastle Salutes New York, Newcastle Polytechnic Gallery, Newcastle upon Tyne, United Kingdom, October 8–November 4
1984
Parasol and Simca: Two Presses/Two Processes, Center Gallery, Bucknell University, Lewisburg, Pennsylvania, February 3–April 4, 1984; Sordoni Art Gallery, Wilkes College, Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania, April 15–May 13
Abstract Painting Redefined, Louis K. Meisel Gallery, New York, February 16 – March 30
Now and Then: A Selection of Recent and Earlier Paintings, Daniel Weinberg Gallery, Los Angeles, June 1 – August 31
American Abstract Painting: 1960–1980, Margo Leavin Gallery, Los Angeles, June 19 – August 24
1986
The Purist Image, Marian Locks Gallery, Philadelphia, November
1986–1987
The Window in Twentieth-Century Art, Neuberger Museum of Art, Purchase College, State University of New York, September 21, 1986 – January 18, 1987; Contemporary Arts Museum, Houston, April 24– June 29, 1987
The Idea of Nature, 33 Bond Gallery, New York, June 12–July 31
Into the Void: Abstract Art, 1948–2008, Tucson Museum of Art, July 17–September 26
2008–2009
Steve DiBenedetto, Ralph Humphrey, Chris Martin, and Andrew Masullo/Paintings, Daniel Weinberg Gallery, Los Angeles, December 6, 2008 – January 31, 2009[75]
2009
Image Matter, Mary Boone Gallery, New York, February 21 – March 28[76]