Installation view of Richard Mayhew: Natural Order at Venus Over Manhattan, New York, 2023.
Richard Mayhew in his studio. Photo: Jason Henry.
A Centenary
Richard Mayhew
100 Years
Venus Over Manhattan celebrates the 100th birthday of Richard Mayhew, an artist whose profound and emotional connection to the America art has captivated audiences for decades.
Richard Mayhew at his home studio in Soquel, California
The New York Times
At 99, the Painter Richard Mayhew Is Still Upending Expectations
by Jonathan Griffin
The painter Richard Mayhew, who recently celebrated his 99th birthday, has lived through as broad a swath of this nation’s history as anyone you might hope to meet. Sitting at a patio table outside his cedar-shingled suburban home in Soquel, near Santa Cruz, Mayhew leaned back in his chair and reflected on his long life. “I drove across the United States six times,” he said. “Three over, and three back, from New York to San Francisco. I was always looking.”
Now Representing
Richard Mayhew
Richard Mayhew (b. 1924, Amityville, NY) has garnered wide renown in a career spanning more than seven decades for vivid, improvisational paintings that render emotional visions of the American landscape. At 99 years old, Mayhew continues to make paintings and works on paper that push landscape toward total abstracting, foregoing the limits of representation in pursuit of pure color.
Richard Mayhew. Photo: Jason Henry for the New York Times
Richard Mayhew was born in 1924 in Amityville, New York. He studied at the Brooklyn Museum Art School, the Art Students, and Columbia University. In 1978, The Studio Museum in Harlem hosted a retrospective exhibition of his work titled “Richard Mayhew: An American Abstractionist.” Mayhew’s work has been the subject of numerous international solo presentations, including recent exhibitions at Venus Over Manhattan, New York; San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; South Etna Montauk Foundation, Montauk; and the Heckscher Museum of Art, Huntington. Mayhew’s work frequently features in major institutional exhibitions, including recent presentations at the Wadsworth Atheneum, Hartford; Hudson River Museum, Yonkers, NY; Hauser & Wirth, Southampton; Detroit Institute of Arts; Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington, D.C.; Brooklyn Museum; The Broad, Los Angeles; Fine Arts Museum of San Francisco, de Young Museum, San Francisco; and the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston. His work is held in the permanent collections of numerous public institutions, including the Art Institute of Chicago; Detroit Institute of Arts, Detroit; High Museum of Art, Atlanta; Los Angeles County Museum of Art; Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.; Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington, D.C.; San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, San Francisco; The Studio Museum in Harlem, New York; and the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York. Richard Mayhew is Professor Emeritus at Pennsylvania State University and previously taught at numerous institutions including Hunter College, Smith College, the Art Students League, Pratt Institute, and the Brooklyn Museum Art School. He is among the youngest members ever elected to the National Academy of Design, and is the recipient of numerous awards, fellowships, and residencies. Richard Mayhew lives and works in Soquel, California.
“Landscapes for Richard Mayhew” is a tribute to a renowned artist that links America’s earliest art movements with contemporary art making. As over a dozen prominent African American artists honor the legacy of Richard Mayhew, through landscape painting.
Today is a glorious day marking the 100th birthday of Richard Mayhew. An artist, educator, and U.S. Marine veteran, Mayhew is the last living member of Spiral, the influential artist collective co-founded by Romare Bearden.
Venus Over Manhattan announced today that the gallery now represents artist Richard Mayhew. This announcement follows the gallery’s critically acclaimed exhibition, “Richard Mayhew: Natural Order,” which closed on June 23rd, 2023.
Mayhew has not been embraced by the art world because the trajectory he has pursued challenges the categories to which Black artists are consigned.
With a show in Manhattan, he says he inherited from his Indigenous forebears “inventive consciousness.”
Here Are 10 Exhibitions to See During Frieze New York, From Major New Kusama Works to Little-Known O’Keeffes
This Week In Culture: May 1 - May 7, 2023
A Monthly Culture Matrix for the Cosmopolitan Traveler
For Independent 20th Century, Venus Over Manhattan will showcase two masters of the transcendental landscape.
