Art News. Vasari Codex

candle obituary schedule May 5, 2026 visibility 39 link 22 artists, 1 gallery

Remembering Pat Steir, one of the 20th century’s late-blooming great artists

Pat Steir, the acclaimed American painter known for her Waterfall series, died in Manhattan on 25 March at age 87. The article traces her career from early struggles as a freelance illustrator and art director, through her transformative encounter with Sol LeWitt in the early 1970s, to her eventual emergence as a major figure in contemporary painting. It highlights her teaching at CalArts and Parsons, her involvement with feminist and artist-run institutions like Heresies and Printed Matter, and the pivotal moment in the early 1980s when she cut up a reproduction of a Jan Brueghel the Elder flower painting into 64 panels, repainting each in a different historical style.

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candle obituary schedule Dec 10, 2025 visibility 49 link 127 artists, 14 galleries

in memoriam 2024

Artnet News published an alphabetical in memoriam list commemorating art world figures who died in 2024, including printmaker Norman Ackroyd, museum director Hope Alswang, sculptor Carl Andre, curator and writer David Anfam, painter Frank Auerbach, and gallerist Patti Astor. Each entry includes a brief tribute highlighting their key achievements and contributions, such as Ackroyd's meticulous printmaking techniques, Alswang's diversification of the Norton Museum of Art's collection, Andre's foundational role in Minimalism, Anfam's influential scholarship on Abstract Expressionism, Auerbach's distinctive painterly style, and Astor's pioneering East Village gallery.

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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 Jul 21, 2025 visibility 24 link 7 artists, 1 gallery

multimedia artist raymond saunders dies at 90

Raymond Saunders, a multimedia artist known for his enigmatic, sociopolitical paintings and assemblage style, has died at age 90. His passing was announced jointly by his representing galleries—Casemore, Andrew Kreps, and David Zwirner—on Instagram. Saunders's work often explored the Black American experience through extensive use of black paint and complex narratives, as articulated in his influential 1967 essay "Black Is a Color." His first career-spanning retrospective, "Flowers from a Black Garden," recently closed at the Carnegie Museum of Art in Pittsburgh, his hometown. Saunders had a long teaching career in the Bay Area and received numerous honors, including a Rome Prize Fellowship and a Guggenheim Fellowship.

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candle obituary schedule May 14, 2026 visibility 40 link 8 artists, 3 galleries

Mary Lovelace O’Neal, Painter Who Defied the Bounds of Abstraction, Dies at 84

Mary Lovelace O’Neal, the American painter known for her large-scale abstract works that defied easy categorization, died in Mérida, Mexico, on May 10 at age 84. Her death was confirmed by her galleries, Jenkins Johnson and Marianne Boesky, on May 13. Active in the Civil Rights movement of the 1960s, O’Neal developed a distinctive practice that blended Minimalism, Abstract Expressionism, and figurative elements, most notably through her Lampblack series and later the "Whales Fucking" series. Her work gained renewed attention in the 21st century, with exhibitions at Mnuchin Gallery and the Museum of the African Diaspora, and her painting *Blue Whale a.k.a. #12* (1983) was selected for the 2024 Whitney Biennial.

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candle obituary schedule Apr 11, 2026 visibility 23 link 7 artists, 1 gallery

Celeste Dupuy-Spencer, Painter Who Used Her Art to Fight for Justice, Dies at 46

Acclaimed American painter Celeste Dupuy-Spencer has passed away at the age of 46 at her home in Los Angeles. Known for her visceral and politically charged figurative works, Dupuy-Spencer rose to prominence through her inclusion in the 2017 Whitney Biennial and the 2018 Made in L.A. biennial. Her death was announced by the Jeffrey Deitch gallery just ahead of a scheduled exhibition of her new work in Los Angeles.

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candle obituary schedule May 2, 2025 visibility 23 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 1, 2026 visibility 29 link 4 artists, 1 gallery

Georg Baselitz, artist who turned painting upside down, 1938–2026

Georg Baselitz, the German painter, sculptor, and printmaker known for turning his canvases upside down, has died at age 88. Born Hans-Georg Kern in Saxony in 1938, he witnessed the bombing of Dresden as a child, an experience that shaped his artistic vision. Expelled from art school in East Berlin, he moved to West Berlin and adopted the name Baselitz. His first solo exhibition in 1963 was deemed obscene and confiscated. In 1969, he created his first upside-down painting, which became his signature. He rose to international prominence as a neo-expressionist in the late 1970s and 80s, represented Germany at the Venice Biennale in 1980, and continued working until his death. A recent series of his paintings will be shown at the Fondazione Giorgio Cini in Venice from May to September 2026.

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candle obituary schedule Nov 21, 2025 visibility 19 link 9 artists, 1 gallery

llyn foulkes obituary

American artist Llyn Foulkes has died at age 91, as confirmed by Kent Fine Art. Known for defying stylistic categorization, Foulkes was an early pioneer of Pop art, showing at Fergus Gallery in the mid-1960s ahead of Andy Warhol. He won the painting prize at the Paris Biennale in 1967 and represented the United States at the IX São Paulo Art Biennial that same year. His work incorporated collaged elements and explored themes of photography, Americana, and commercial pop culture. Foulkes was also a jazz musician, performing with R. Crumb and forming the Rubber Band, which appeared on Johnny Carson's Tonight Show. He invented a one-man-band instrument called the Machine and participated in Documenta 13 in 2012, with a retrospective at the Hammer Museum in 2013.

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candle obituary schedule Apr 3, 2026 visibility 34 link 5 artists, 1 gallery

Glen Baxter obituary

Cartoonist and surrealist Glen Baxter has died at the age of 82. He was celebrated for his distinctive style, which blended deadpan captions with pop art-inspired scenes featuring characters like cowboys and spacemen in bizarre situations. His work appeared in major publications like the New Yorker and the Observer, and he was also a staple of humorous greeting cards.

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candle obituary schedule May 20, 2026 visibility 4 link 5 artists

Harald Metzkes, Postwar German Painter of ‘World Theater,’ Dies at 97

Harald Metzkes, the German painter known for his classically indebted and symbolically rich works created after World War II, died at age 97 in Brandenburg. His death was confirmed by his son, sculptor Robert Metzkes. Metzkes gained prominence in East Germany for rejecting socialist realism, instead developing a distinctive style that combined poetic imagery, references to classical modernism, and deeply symbolic visual worlds. The Neue Nationalgalerie is currently showing his painting "Removal of the Six-Armed Goddess" (1956) in an exhibition titled "Extreme Tension. Art between Politics and Society Collection of the Nationalgalerie 1945–2000."

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candle obituary schedule Dec 14, 2025 visibility 17 link 2 artists

guy cogeval obituary former director musee dorsay paris

Guy Cogeval, the former director of Paris's Musée d'Orsay, died on November 13 at age 70 after a long illness. A specialist in 19th-century art and the Nabis, Cogeval led the Musée d'Orsay from 2008 to 2017, overseeing a major renovation of 80 percent of its galleries and merging it with the Musée de l'Orangerie. He previously directed the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts and the National Museum of French Monuments, and curated acclaimed exhibitions including "Hitchcock and Art" and "Édouard Vuillard, Master of Post-Impressionism."

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candle obituary schedule Jun 24, 2025 visibility 14 link 4 artists

architect michael graves dead

Architect and designer Michael Graves has died at age 80 of natural causes at his home in Princeton, New Jersey. Known for iconic projects such as the Portland Municipal Services Building, the Denver Public Library, and the Alessi tea kettle for Target, Graves was a leading figure in postmodern architecture. His death prompted tributes from fellow architects Tod Williams and Richard Meier, who recalled his teaching at Princeton University and his influence on the field. Graves also designed the Humana Building, Team Disney building, and Walt Disney World Dolphin Resort, and in later years focused on accessibility projects after becoming paralyzed from a spinal cord infection.

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candle obituary schedule May 13, 2026 visibility 12 link 6 artists, 3 galleries

Mary Lovelace O’Neal, Abstract Painter Who Refused to Conform, Dies at 84

Mary Lovelace O’Neal, an abstract painter known for her gestural, unruly works that defied categorization, died on Sunday in Mérida, Mexico, at age 84. Her galleries, Jenkins Johnson and Marianne Boesky, announced her passing. O’Neal produced sprawling paintings characterized by tangles of drippy strokes, often using lamp black pigment to create intensely black canvases. She rejected labels like Abstract Expressionist or Minimalist, insisting she was simply a painter. Her series "Whales Fucking" (1979) and a 2020 exhibition at Mnuchin Gallery revived her profile, leading to inclusion in the 2024 Whitney Biennial.

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candle obituary schedule Mar 20, 2026 visibility 19 link 1 artist, 1 gallery

Philip Castle obituary

Philip Castle, the influential British airbrush artist best known for creating the iconic poster for Stanley Kubrick's film 'A Clockwork Orange,' has died at age 83. Castle's distinctive, futuristic style, achieved with an airbrush tool, defined a key visual aesthetic of late 20th-century pop culture.

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candle obituary schedule Dec 9, 2025 visibility 17 link 10 artists

napoleon jones henderson africobra artist dead

Napoleon Jones-Henderson, a key member of the AfriCOBRA collective known for creating art during the Black Power era, died in Boston on December 6 at age 82 after battling cancer. Jones-Henderson was part of the Chicago-based group founded in 1968 by artists including Jeff Donaldson, Wadsworth Jarrell, and Barbara Jones-Hogu, which synthesized African styles with Black American expressions. Despite the group's historical significance, their work was largely overlooked by major museums until recent years, with Jones-Henderson receiving his first major survey at the Institute of Contemporary Art Boston in 2022.

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candle obituary schedule May 15, 2026 visibility 12 link 10 artists, 1 gallery

Artist Valie Export, Who Saw Right Through the Male Gaze, Dies at 85

Austrian artist Valie Export, a pioneering feminist performance and media artist, died on May 14, three days before her 86th birthday. Her death was confirmed by Thaddaeus Ropac Gallery. Export, born Waltraud Lehner in 1940, rejected traditional domestic roles and adopted her iconic all-uppercase name from a cigarette brand. She created guerrilla-style performances and films that directly confronted the male gaze and patriarchal society, often using her own body as a medium. Key works include “Genital Panic” (1968), in which she walked through a Munich cinema in crotchless pants, and “Tapp und Tastkino (Tap and Touch Cinema)” (1968), where she invited strangers to touch her bare breasts through a stage strapped to her chest.

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candle obituary schedule Jan 22, 2026 visibility 16 link 7 artists, 2 galleries

lorena levi painter dead

Lorena Levi, a British artist known for her narrative portraits painted on wood, died on January 8 at age 29 after battling pancreatic cancer. Her death was announced via Instagram. Levi gained rapid momentum in the UK art scene over the past few years, staging a show in Milan with M+B gallery, participating in the V.O. Curations program, and being added to Marlborough Gallery's roster shortly before it closed in 2023. Her work is held in the British government's national collection. She was born in Istanbul in 1997, raised in Tel Aviv and the UK, and studied at Art & Guilds in London and Edinburgh College of Art.

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candle obituary schedule Jan 16, 2026 visibility 22 link 6 artists, 1 gallery

Beatriz González, indefatigable force in Colombian art, has died, aged 93

Beatriz González, the influential Colombian artist, writer, curator, educator, and intellectual known as 'la maestra,' died in Bogotá on January 9 at age 93. Born in 1932 in Bucaramanga, she studied architecture and fine arts before forging a distinctive path in Colombian art, rejecting abstraction and the style of her contemporary Fernando Botero. Her work, including the series 'Suicidas del Sisga' (1965) and 'La Encajera,' reinterpreted Western artworks and local press photographs with flat forms and vibrant colors, often incorporating kitsch and subaltern aesthetics. She was a key figure in the Museo de Arte Moderno de Bogotá (Mambo), envisioned a school for museum guides, served as chief curator of the Museo Nacional de Colombia, and mentored generations of museum professionals.

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candle obituary schedule Apr 28, 2025 visibility 16 link 6 artists, 2 galleries

suki seokyeong kang sculptor dead

Suki Seokyeong Kang, a Korean sculptor known for reimagining traditional Korean artistic forms in contemporary sculpture, died on Sunday at age 48 after a years-long battle with cancer. Her passing was announced by Seoul’s Kukje Gallery and her New York representative, Tina Kim Gallery. Kang’s work drew from centuries-old practices such as Joseon Dynasty painting and 600-year-old musical notation, translating them into highly conceptual, visually seductive sculptures that appeared in biennials worldwide, including Gwangju and Venice, and in museum surveys such as a 2023 show at Seoul’s Leeum Museum of Art. At the time of her death, her largest-ever US exhibition was on view at the Museum of Contemporary Art Denver, featuring her "Mountain" series inspired by the traditional Korean style si-seo-hwa.

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candle obituary schedule Dec 7, 2025 visibility 20 link 13 artists

Remembering Frank Gehry, legendary architect of Guggenheim Museum Bilbao

Frank Gehry, the legendary architect who transformed the global architectural landscape with his deconstructivist style, has died in Santa Monica on 5 December. The article traces his career from his early days remodeling his own Santa Monica home—a controversial project that used corrugated metal, plywood, and chain-link fencing—to his rise as a Pritzker Prize winner and the creator of the iconic Guggenheim Museum Bilbao (1997). Gehry, born Ephraim Goldberg in Toronto in 1929, studied at the University of Southern California and Harvard before founding Frank O. Gehry & Associates in 1962, and spent over six decades championing buildings that embraced emotion and movement over cold minimalism.

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candle obituary schedule Apr 21, 2025 visibility 16 link 36 artists

Remembering Pope Francis, for 12 years head of the Catholic church and proprietor in trust of the Vatican's library and art collections

Pope Francis, the 266th pope and the first from the Americas and the Global South, has died. He was the spiritual leader of 1.3 billion Catholics, head of state of the Vatican, and proprietor in trust of the Vatican's vast art and architectural collections. Born Jorge Mario Bergoglio in Argentina, he was the first Jesuit pope and the first to take the name Francis, signaling a commitment to austerity and social justice. His papacy, beginning in 2013 after Benedict XVI's resignation, addressed theological controversies, church culture wars, interfaith relations, Vatican financial reform, the clergy sexual abuse crisis, and cultural restitution from the Vatican's holdings.

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candle obituary schedule Apr 30, 2026 source 3 sources visibility 30 link 2 artists

Georg Baselitz, German Neo-Expressionist Painter, Dies at 88

Georg Baselitz, the German Neo-Expressionist painter known for his provocative, upside-down figurative works, has died at age 88. Along with contemporaries like Anselm Kiefer, Baselitz led a frontal assault on the dominant Minimalist and Conceptualist art movements of the 1970s, reviving expressive, gestural painting in postwar Germany.

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candle obituary schedule Jun 10, 2025 visibility 10 link 16 artists, 1 gallery

margaret keane obituary

Margaret Keane, the American painter known for her iconic "Big Eyed Waif" portraits, died on June 26 at age 94 in her Napa Valley home due to heart failure. For years, her second husband Walter Keane fraudulently claimed credit for her work, a deception that unraveled in the 1970s when she challenged him to a public paint-off and later won a courtroom showdown in 1986. Her story gained renewed attention with Tim Burton's 2014 film *Big Eyes*, starring Amy Adams.

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candle obituary schedule Oct 15, 2025 visibility 13 link 8 artists

artist drew struzan star war harry potter movie posters dies 78

Drew Struzan, the artist behind iconic movie posters for franchises like Star Wars, Harry Potter, and Indiana Jones, died on October 13 at age 78 after a battle with Alzheimer's. His wife, writer Dylan Struzan, announced the news on Instagram, noting his daily engagement with the works of Van Gogh, Gauguin, and Cézanne. Struzan studied under Lorser Feitelson at the Art Center College of Design in Pasadena and was influenced by Impressionists as well as Renaissance masters like Michelangelo and Pontormo.

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candle obituary schedule Apr 24, 2026 visibility 18 link 1 artist

Aldwyth, Ascetic Whose Artwork Reordered the World, Dies at 90

Aldwyth, a reclusive artist known for her intricate collages and Joseph Cornell-inspired assemblages, has died at age 90. Living an ascetic lifestyle, she created epic, densely layered works that reordered art history and her own place within—and outside—it, often using found objects and meticulous cut-paper compositions.

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candle obituary schedule Oct 16, 2025 visibility 26 link 19 artists

Remembering Sylvio Perlstein, the Belgian art collector and jeweller, who died aged 94

Sylvio Perlstein, the Belgian art collector and jeweller, died at age 94 in Antwerp, where he was born in 1931. A third-generation gem-cutter from a diamond dynasty, he fled the Nazis with his Jewish family to Brazil as an infant, reinventing himself as "Sylvio." His collecting began as an adolescent in Rio, where he bought a strange painting from a florist. Over decades, he amassed a major collection of 20th-century avant-garde art, befriending artists like Man Ray and Yves Klein, and acquiring works by René Magritte, Marcel Broodthaers, and Pablo Picasso. He was known for his discerning eye, seeking works that were "esquisito"—weird, strange, and different—rather than conventionally beautiful.

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candle obituary schedule Aug 1, 2025 visibility 25 link 14 artists

Robert Wilson, experimental playwright, director and artist, has died, aged 83

Robert Wilson, the visionary experimental playwright, director, and visual artist known for his highly stylized theatrical productions, has died at age 83. He passed away at his home in Water Mill, New York, on July 31 following a brief acute illness, according to a statement from the Watermill Center, the arts organization he founded. Wilson's most famous works include the silent opera *Deafman Glance* (1970) and the epic collaboration with composer Philip Glass, *Einstein on the Beach* (1976). He was also a prolific visual artist, creating drawings, sculptures, and video portraits, including a series featuring Lady Gaga, Pope.L, and Isabella Rossellini, and his work was exhibited at institutions such as SFMoMA, the Centre Pompidou, and the Louvre.

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candle obituary schedule Apr 30, 2026 visibility 19 link 3 artists

georg baselitz dies at 88, pioneer of inverted painting and postwar german art

Georg Baselitz, the influential German painter known for his inverted figures and raw, expressive style, has died at age 88. A pioneer of postwar German art, Baselitz gained international fame in the 1960s by turning his canvases upside down, forcing viewers to focus on form and paint rather than narrative. His work often grappled with the trauma of Nazi Germany and the divided nation's identity, making him a central figure in the Neo-Expressionist movement.

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candle obituary schedule Aug 13, 2025 visibility 12 link 1 artist

Ukrainian ‘artist of pain’ David Chichkan killed on frontline

David Chichkan, a prominent Ukrainian contemporary artist known for his anarchist ideals and avant-garde iconography, was killed while fighting Russian forces in Ukraine's Zaporizhzhia region on August 8, 2024. The Ministry of Culture and Strategic Communications reported that he died repelling an assault by Russian infantry. Chichkan, born in Kyiv in 1986, came from a dynasty of artists and was known for works infused with references to Ukraine's activist and anarchist history. His death adds to a growing list of Ukrainian cultural workers killed since Russia's full-scale invasion began in February 2022, with PEN Ukraine recording 221 cultural figures dead.

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