Art News. Vasari Codex

candle obituary schedule Mar 25, 2026 visibility 30 link 21 artists, 1 gallery

calvin tomkins dead marcel duchamp new yorker

Calvin Tomkins, the legendary New Yorker writer who chronicled the contemporary art world for over six decades, has died at the age of 100. Joining the magazine's staff in 1960, Tomkins became the preeminent profiler of his era, translating complex aesthetic shifts and avant-garde movements into accessible, witty, and insightful prose. His career-defining focus on art began unexpectedly in 1959 with a chance interview with Marcel Duchamp, sparking a lifelong fascination with the creative process.

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candle obituary schedule Dec 28, 2025 visibility 32 link 186 artists, 9 galleries

2025 art obituaries

Artnet News has published its annual roundup of art world figures who died in 2025, honoring a diverse range of individuals including museum directors, painters, curators, philanthropists, and an archaeologist. Among those remembered are Julia Alexander, former director of the Yale Center for British Art; Sylvain Amic, recently appointed to lead the Musée d'Orsay; philanthropist Wallis Annenberg; abstract painters Timothy App and Jo Baer; curator Leonid Bazhanov; and Tony Bechara, painter and former director of El Museo del Barrio.

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candle obituary schedule Sep 25, 2025 visibility 31 link 28 artists, 3 galleries

joel shapiro icons 2025

Joel Shapiro, the acclaimed American sculptor known for his abstract wooden and bronze figures, died June 14 at age 83. In the weeks before his death, he gave a career-spanning interview to Max Norman for ARTnews, reflecting on his legacy. The article describes Shapiro's final New York show at Pace Gallery in fall 2024, which featured large works like "Splay" (2024), "Wave" (2024), and his largest wooden sculpture "ARK" (2020/2023–24), alongside small models and bronzes. It also offers a glimpse into his Long Island City studio, where he constantly experimented with form, material, and scale.

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candle obituary schedule May 9, 2026 visibility 21 link 22 artists, 1 gallery

Bruno Bischofberger, Art Dealer of Stars Like Andy Warhol and Jean-Michel Basquiat, Dies at 86

Bruno Bischofberger, the legendary Swiss art dealer who championed American artists like Andy Warhol and Jean-Michel Basquiat in Europe, has died at age 86. His Zurich-based gallery announced his death on Saturday. Bischofberger founded his eponymous gallery in 1963, which became one of Switzerland's most important blue-chip art spaces. He forged deep personal and professional relationships with artists, including acquiring a stake in Warhol's Interview magazine, producing Warhol's film L'amour, and famously proposing the collaborative paintings between Warhol and Basquiat in 1984. Bischofberger also maintained a decades-long tradition of placing advertisements on the back page of every Artforum issue.

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candle obituary schedule May 4, 2026 visibility 37 link 6 artists, 2 galleries

Raghu Rai obituary

Raghu Rai, the renowned Indian photographer known for capturing his country's post-independence history through singular, enduring images, has died at age 83 from cancer. Rai's career spanned six decades, during which he documented events from the 1984 Bhopal gas disaster to the Bangladesh war of independence, and photographed figures including Indira Gandhi, Mother Teresa, and the Dalai Lama. He joined Magnum Photos in 1977 after being invited by Henri Cartier-Bresson, and worked as a staff photographer for the Statesman and as picture editor for India Today.

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candle obituary schedule Jan 26, 2026 visibility 16 link 7 artists, 2 galleries

seyni awa camara sculptor dead

Seyni Awa Camara, a Diola sculptor from Bignona, Senegal, known for her totemic clay sculptures of stacked human bodies, has died. Her work, steeped in spirituality and inspired by a ram's horn she called a 'genie,' gained international recognition after being discovered by anthropologist Michèle Odeyé-Finzi and introduced to Europe by gallerist André Magnin. Despite her global following—including fans like Pharrell Williams and Louise Bourgeois—Camara remained largely unknown in her home country, relying on foreign buyers to sustain her practice.

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candle obituary schedule Dec 5, 2025 visibility 20 link 13 artists, 1 gallery

frank gehry dead guggenheim bilbao

Frank Gehry, the award-winning architect whose revolutionary museum designs reshaped the art world, died on Friday in Santa Monica, California, at age 96 due to a brief respiratory illness. Best known for the Guggenheim Museum Bilbao (1997), Gehry's signature style—featuring sloping, incongruous forms clad in titanium—transformed the architectural landscape of art institutions worldwide. His other major museum projects include the Fondation Louis Vuitton in Paris, the Walt Disney Concert Hall in Los Angeles, and an upcoming Guggenheim museum in Abu Dhabi.

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candle obituary schedule Jun 10, 2025 visibility 22 link 9 artists, 3 galleries

david lynch obituary

David Lynch, the acclaimed artist, filmmaker, and musician known for his surreal and unsettling aesthetic, has died at age 78. His family announced his passing on Facebook, noting he had been battling emphysema after a lifetime of smoking. Lynch's career spanned over four decades, producing iconic films like *Blue Velvet* (1986) and *Inland Empire* (2006), as well as the hit TV series *Twin Peaks* (1990–91). Beyond cinema, he maintained a rich visual art practice, creating figurative paintings, assemblages, and photographs that echoed his cinematic themes of home, light, and dream logic.

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candle obituary schedule Feb 27, 2026 visibility 22 link 9 artists, 1 gallery

san francisco dealer rena bransten dead at 92

Rena Bransten, a foundational figure in the San Francisco art scene, has died at the age of 92 following a heart attack and a subsequent fall. Since founding her eponymous gallery in 1975, Bransten became a champion for California-based artists, with a pioneering focus on women and artists of color. Her gallery represented major figures including John Waters, Dawoud Bey, and Fred Wilson, evolving from its origins in ceramics to a multidisciplinary powerhouse that recently transitioned to a nomadic model.

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candle obituary schedule Jan 12, 2026 visibility 24 link 7 artists, 1 gallery

beatriz gonzalez painter dead

Beatriz González, a pioneering Colombian painter and one of the most important Latin American artists of the 20th century, died on Friday at her home in Bogotá at age 93. Her Zurich-based representative, Galerie Peter Kilchmann, announced her passing but did not specify a cause. González first gained fame in the 1960s by remaking art historical masterpieces by Raphael and Leonardo da Vinci in a deliberately garish color palette, later pivoting in the 1980s to explicitly political works critiquing government violence in Colombia. Her career included major exhibitions at Documenta 14 in 2017, the Museum of Modern Art's 2019 rehang, and a retrospective that premiered at the Pinacoteca de São Paulo and will travel to the Barbican Centre in London and the Astrup Fearnley Museet in Oslo.

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candle obituary schedule Dec 8, 2025 visibility 27 link 7 artists, 1 gallery

cultural figures remember late frank gehry internationally renowned museum starchitect

Frank Gehry, the visionary architect behind iconic cultural landmarks such as the Guggenheim Museum Bilbao, Fondation Louis Vuitton in Paris, and Walt Disney Concert Hall in Los Angeles, died on December 5 at age 96. Over the weekend, art and architecture figures including artist Rob Pruitt, Serpentine Galleries artistic director Hans Ulrich Obrist, and leaders of institutions like the Guggenheim Bilbao, LACMA, and the J. Paul Getty Trust shared personal remembrances and tributes, highlighting his groundbreaking designs, enduring friendships, and profound influence.

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candle obituary schedule Jun 9, 2025 visibility 22 link 15 artists, 1 gallery

influential french gallerist daniel lelong dies 92

Daniel Lelong, the influential French gallerist who cultivated deep relationships with 20th-century modern artists, died at age 92. Lelong began his career drafting statutes for the Marguerite and Aimé Maeght Foundation before working at Galerie Maeght, where he organized exhibitions for icons like Joan Miró, Alexander Calder, and Alberto Giacometti. After Maeght's death in 1981, Lelong became director of Galerie Maeght-Lelong alongside Jean Frémon and Jacques Dupin, and the gallery was renamed Galerie Lelong & Co. in 1987, with locations in New York and Zurich. He showed at the first Art Basel in 1970 and maintained close ties with artists such as Jaume Plensa, Jannis Kounellis, and Sean Scully.

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candle obituary schedule May 2, 2025 visibility 24 link 10 artists, 1 gallery

dara birnbaum video artist dead wonder woman

Dara Birnbaum, a pioneering video artist known for subverting mainstream media through her re-edited television clips, has died at age 78. Her longtime representative, Marian Goodman Gallery, confirmed her death but did not disclose a cause. Birnbaum rose to prominence in the late 1970s and 1980s by pirating TV programs and resequencing their images to disrupt passive viewing. Her most famous work, *Technology/Transformation: Wonder Woman* (1978–79), loops clips of Lynda Carter as the superhero, exposing hidden politics and questioning the show's brand of feminism. The piece is now regarded as a landmark in both feminist art and video art.

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candle obituary schedule May 15, 2026 visibility 10 link 5 artists, 2 galleries

VALIE EXPORT, pioneering artist who centred the female body, 1940–2026

VALIE EXPORT, the pioneering Austrian feminist artist known for her provocative performances centered on the female body, has died at age 85. Born in Linz in 1940, she adopted the name VALIE EXPORT in 1967 and quickly rose to prominence with iconic actions such as *TAP and TOUCH Cinema* (1968) and *Action Pants: Genital Panic* (1968), which challenged passive representations of women. Her work spanned photography, film, and expanded cinema, and she participated in major international exhibitions including documenta 6 and 12, and the Venice Biennale, where she and Maria Lassnig became the first women to represent Austria in 1980.

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candle obituary schedule May 1, 2026 visibility 30 link 8 artists, 1 gallery

Georg Baselitz, Lion of German Neo-Expressionism, Dead at 88

Georg Baselitz, the influential German Neo-Expressionist painter, printmaker, and sculptor, died on April 30 at age 88. His death was announced by Thaddaeus Ropac gallery, his longtime representative. Born Hans-Georg Kern in 1938 in Saxony, Baselitz was profoundly shaped by his childhood experience of war and the destruction of Nazi Germany. He was expelled from art school in East Berlin for "socio-political immaturity," moved to West Berlin, and adopted his pseudonym from his hometown. His first solo exhibition in 1963 was raided by police for obscenity, cementing his reputation as a provocateur. Known for his upside-down figures and fierce brushwork, he created series such as "Heroes" and "Fracture" that addressed trauma, violence, and the psychic toll of postwar life.

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candle obituary schedule Apr 29, 2026 visibility 26 link 2 artists, 1 gallery

Katherine El-Salahi, anti-apartheid activist, anthropologist and publisher, 1945–2026

Katherine El-Salahi, an anti-apartheid activist, anthropologist, and publisher, has died at age 81. Born Katherine Levine, she studied at Cambridge and SOAS before joining the clandestine group London Recruits in 1970, carrying out leaflet bomb propaganda and running guns into South Africa. She later became instrumental in the career of her husband, Sudanese painter Ibrahim El-Salahi, organizing his landmark 2013 retrospective at Tate Modern, building his archive, and securing gallery representation with Vigo Gallery.

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candle obituary schedule Mar 20, 2026 visibility 24 link 12 artists, 1 gallery

art calvin tompkins new yorker dies

Calvin Tomkins, the longtime New Yorker writer known for his intimate profiles of modern and contemporary artists, has died at age 100 in his home in Middletown, Rhode Island. Over more than six decades, Tomkins profiled giants of the art world including Marcel Duchamp, Robert Rauschenberg, Jasper Johns, John Cage, Georgia O'Keeffe, Kerry James Marshall, and Rashid Johnson, beginning with a 1959 assignment on Duchamp that launched his career. He continued writing sweeping profiles as recently as 2024.

newspaper Cultured open_in_new Read original

candle obituary schedule Apr 13, 2026 source 2 sources visibility 24 link 5 artists, 5 galleries

Painter Celeste Dupuy-Spencer dies at 46.

The American painter Celeste Dupuy-Spencer has passed away at the age of 46 at her home in Los Angeles. Her gallery, Jeffrey Deitch, confirmed the news of her death but did not specify a cause. The announcement comes just weeks before a scheduled solo exhibition of her recent work, which is still set to open at the gallery’s Los Angeles location on April 17.

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candle obituary schedule Dec 9, 2025 visibility 17 link 12 artists

frank gehry architect obituary

Frank Gehry, the renowned American architect, has died at age 96 in his Santa Monica home after a brief respiratory illness. He is survived by his wife, three children, and a vast portfolio of iconic buildings including the Guggenheim Bilbao in Spain, the Walt Disney Concert Hall in Los Angeles, the Fondation Louis Vuitton in Paris, and the 8 Spruce skyscraper in New York. The article traces his life from his birth in Toronto in 1929, his education at USC and Harvard, his early career at Gruen Associates, and his rise to fame through innovative, sculptural designs that transformed modern architecture.

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candle obituary schedule Sep 22, 2025 visibility 21 link 11 artists

art world figures remember late patron agnes gund a legend and icon

Agnes Gund, a towering art collector and patron of New York's Museum of Modern Art, died Thursday in Manhattan at age 87. Following the announcement, artists and cultural workers including Roxana Marcoci, Glenn Ligon, Lorna Simpson, and Hoor Al Qasimi honored her memory on social media, recalling her friendship, generosity, and commitment to social justice. Gund spearheaded MoMA's 1990s expansion, founded the arts education nonprofit Studio in the School in 1977, and in 2017 sold Roy Lichtenstein's "Masterpiece" (1962) to launch the Art for Justice Fund, a $100 million grant initiative for criminal justice reform.

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candle obituary schedule Sep 22, 2025 visibility 22 link 25 artists

agnes gund dead moma art collecting

Agnes Gund, one of the most influential art patrons in the United States, has died at 87. Her collecting and philanthropy transformed the American art world, particularly at the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), where she served as president from 1991 to 2002 and remained a life trustee. Gund helped fund MoMA's 2004 expansion, designed by Yoshio Taniguchi, and played a key role in bringing MoMA PS1 under the museum's aegis in 1999. She was a longtime donor of over 250 works to MoMA, including pieces by Jasper Johns, Elizabeth Murray, and Julie Mehretu, and appeared on the ARTnews Top 200 Collectors list every year from 1990 to 2018.

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candle obituary schedule May 15, 2026 visibility 15 link 10 artists, 1 gallery

Mary Lovelace O’Neal Leaves Her Mark

Abstract mixed-media painter Mary Lovelace O’Neal, a Civil Rights activist and influential artist known for her monumental canvases and inventive 'lampblack' works, died at age 84. The article also reports that Manhattan’s Neue Galerie will merge with the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and covers the NADA New York art fair, Todd Gray's exhibition, and the Lehman College Art Gallery thesis show.

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candle obituary schedule May 13, 2026 visibility 18 link 23 artists, 6 galleries

Remembering Bruno Bischofberger, Manuela Hoelterhoff, and Steven Durland

This week's In Memoriam column from Hyperallergic honors seven figures from the art world who recently passed away, including Swiss collector and dealer Bruno Bischofberger (1940–2026), Pulitzer-winning arts critic Manuela Hoelterhoff (1949–2026), and artist-editor Steven Durland (1951–2026). Other notable losses include British painter Ray Burgoyne, iconographer Christina Dochwat, German gallerist Jenny Falckenberg, realist painter Ward Nichols, and MoMA preparator Pamela A. Popeson. Each entry provides a brief biography and highlights their contributions to visual art, criticism, and cultural organizing.

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candle obituary schedule Apr 29, 2026 visibility 31 link 16 artists, 4 galleries

George Herms, Titan of West Coast Assemblage, Dies at 90

George Herms, a pioneering figure in the West Coast Assemblage movement, died on April 24 at age 90. Known for transforming found materials, rusted metal, and debris into poetic sculptures and collages, Herms emerged from the Beat scene in Topanga Canyon and was influenced by artist Wallace Berman. His first assemblage show, Secret Exhibition (1957), was held in a vacant lot, and he was later included in MoMA's landmark 1961 exhibition The Art of Assemblage. Over seven decades, he exhibited widely, including at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, and Morán Morán, and created public artworks in LA such as 'Portals to Poetry' and 'Clocktower: Monument to the Unknown.'

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candle obituary schedule Apr 22, 2026 visibility 28 link 21 artists, 4 galleries

Remembering Desmond Morris, James Hayward, and Flo Oy Wong

This week's obituaries mark the passing of several significant figures in the visual arts. They include British surrealist painter and zoologist Desmond Morris, known for his 'biomorph' paintings and experiments with chimpanzee art; West Coast monochrome abstractionist James Hayward, who developed a cult following for his thickly painted canvases; and Chinese American artist Flo Oy Wong, a foundational storyteller of Oakland's Chinatown and the Asian American experience. Also remembered are assemblage artist Aldwyth, Ethiopian painter and educator Behailu Bezabih, Anglo-Irish conservator and designer Alec Cobbe, Bangladeshi art director Tarun Ghosh, and New Mexico painter Michael Hurd.

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candle obituary schedule Dec 10, 2025 visibility 21 link 4 artists, 1 gallery

remembering martin parr

British photographer Martin Parr, known for his highly saturated and often humorous snapshots of everyday life, died on December 6 at age 74 after a four-year battle with cancer. Parr's work, from his early black-and-white images of rural Yorkshire to his iconic color series like "The Last Resort" (1982–85) and "The Cost of Living" (1987-89), captured British eccentricities and social pretensions with a sharp, affectionate eye. He was a full member of Magnum Photos and his images, including those of mass tourism and consumerism, have been widely exhibited and collected.

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candle obituary schedule Jul 3, 2025 visibility 21 link 16 artists, 1 gallery

painter mary abbott has died

Abstract Expressionist painter Mary Abbott has died at age 98 due to heart failure, as confirmed by McCormick Gallery in Chicago, which represented her for nearly 20 years. Known for her colorful canvases and sweeping brushstrokes, Abbott was praised by the New York Times in 2008 as one of the last great Abstract Expressionist painters of her generation. Despite her early modeling career on Vogue covers and her immersion in the downtown New York art scene alongside figures like Mark Rothko and Willem de Kooning, her work received little scholarly recognition until the 2016 Denver Art Museum exhibition "Women of Abstract Expressionism," which traveled to the Mint Museum and Palm Springs Art Museum.

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candle obituary schedule Apr 15, 2026 visibility 25 link 13 artists, 2 galleries

Remembering Pearl Fryar, Siri Aurdal, and Frank Stack

The art world mourns the loss of several influential figures, including self-taught topiary artist Pearl Fryar, who transformed a South Carolina cornfield into a botanical landmark, and painter Celeste Dupuy-Spencer, known for her politically charged works featured in the Whitney Biennial. The week's memorials also include Norwegian sculptor Siri Aurdal, a pioneer of industrial materials in the 1960s Scandinavian scene, and Frank Stack, the educator and cartoonist credited with creating the first underground comic.

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candle obituary schedule Apr 7, 2026 visibility 22 link 5 artists

Christine Ruiz-Picasso, Founder of Museo Picasso Málaga and Artist’s Daughter-in-Law, Dies at 97

Christine Ruiz-Picasso, the daughter-in-law of Pablo Picasso and a pivotal figure in preserving his artistic legacy, has passed away at the age of 97 in Provence, France. Married to Picasso’s eldest son, Paul, she became a primary advocate for the artist's work following her husband's death in 1975. Her most significant achievement was the 2003 founding of the Museo Picasso Málaga, realized through her donation of over 200 artworks and her persistent collaboration with the Andalusian government.

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candle obituary schedule Feb 20, 2026 visibility 17 link 7 artists

henrike naumann obituary

German installation artist Henrike Naumann has passed away at the age of 41 following a battle with cancer. At the time of her death, Naumann was preparing for the pinnacle of her career: representing Germany at the upcoming 61st Venice Biennale. The German pavilion organizers have confirmed that they will work closely with her studio team to realize her finalized artistic vision for the exhibition as planned this May.

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