Arthur Richer

Untitled

1959

Gouache or oil on cardboard

12 x 10 inches (image)

18 x 16 inches (frame)

Signed and dated on reverse; signed and inscribed to the artist and gallerist Herbert Wasserman on the backing of the frame: "To Herby and Mary and Kathy with love on this completely wacked out of its nut Xmas 1962. Arthur Richer."

Good condition, small loss in the black field near lower left; presented in a contemporary archival shadowbox frame.

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The works of Arthur Richer (1928-1965) are extremely hard to come by. He was a "legendary, larger than life personality on the Los Angeles Beat scene," according to critic and historian Michael Duncan in Semina Culture, his book on Wallace Berman and the Los Angeles post-war underground. Duncan describes Richer's early works, such as this one, as "crudely rendered images of birds, animals and figures used as launching pads for vigorous abstract brushwork and violent strokes of color". Richer's wife was a jazz singer and he thought of his painting process like jazz, full of improv and driving energy.

Walter Hopps gave Richer a show of his black paintings at the Ferus Gallery in 1959, the same year he made this work. He was known to be a clown at art openings, especially his own, and for being addicted to barbituates and heroin. Richer died of an overdose at the age of 37. Most of his works are either lost, destroyed or were donated to Agder college by the legendary San Francisco collector Reinar Wennesland, who brought them to Norway when he returned there in the 1970s. This one escaped. It was a gift to the artist and gallerist Herbert Wasserstein, who, like Wennesland, lived on Potrero Hill in San Francisco, a post-war artist colony.

good