NEW ORLEANS — This month, the New Orleans Museum of Art (NOMA) opens the first in-depth presentation of works by artist Robert Gordy in over four decades. After settling in New Orleans at age 31, Gordy achieved national recognition for compositions that revealed a sophisticated and disciplined interplay of space, line, and color in a range of media.
Though scholars and curators have associated Gordy’s work with a range of groups and styles across the 1960’s, ’70s and ’80s, Gordy remained determinedly unaffiliated, preferring, he said, to work “outside the mainstream.”
Robert Gordy: Outside the Mainstream is on view April 9–Oct. 11 at NOMA.
“Robert Gordy was one of New Orleans’s most celebrated artists, exhibiting around the world to great acclaim. In this presentation, Gordy’s groundbreaking explorations of color, pattern, and form can be seen within the context of late 20th-century art history.” said Susan M. Taylor, The Montine McDaniel Freeman director of NOMA. “We are thrilled to bring together this important selection of work, including loans from numerous New Orleans collectors and friends of the artist during his lifetime.”
Gordy was born in 1933 in New Iberia, Louisiana, and received early instruction from Weeks Hall (1894–1959) beginning at the age of 15. He received his MFA from the Louisiana State University in 1956 and continued his studies at Iowa State University and Yale University. He trained with Hans Hoffman in the summer of 1953.
For over a decade, Gordy lived and worked all over the world, including Mexico, Florence, Ibiza, San Francisco, and New York before settling in New Orleans in 1964. Within a few years, Gordy’s mature painting vocabulary emerged: sharply defined, boldly colored motifs and simplified human forms spread across a shallow picture plane. Although best known today for his prints and late monotypes, Gordy worked in a variety of media throughout his career.
His understanding of the subtle color gradations and the creation of a rigorous pictorial structure enabled him to employ repeating patterns—often in a variety of media—to create a unified whole. Deeply engaged with art history, Gordy found inspiration from sources as varied as Cubism, Surrealism, Abstract Expressionism, Art Deco, the arts of Africa, and most notably artists Henri Matisse (1869–1964) and Paul Cézanne (1839–1906). Although others grouped his work with the Pattern & Decoration Movement of the 1970s and early ’80s, and even Chicago’s so-called “Hairy Who,” Gordy never associated himself with a particular style or movement.
In 1982, Gordy turned almost exclusively to the creation of monotypes, unique prints made through the direct application of pigment to the printing plate. While print-making had always been an important component of his practice, it now took precedence. Using a large-scale press, Gordy reveled in the freedom and expressive possibilities afforded by the process. The artist’s gesture—always present in Gordy’s preliminary drawings and sketches, but absent from his completed paintings—sat at the forefront.
“This exhibition shows Gordy as a figure who transcended boundaries of style. His paintings and prints may be understood in conversation with his contemporaries, but Gordy’s work never fit neatly into one movement or school,” said Lisa Rotondo-McCord, deputy director of NOMA. “He deliberately chose to work in New Orleans, at a distance from the reigning New York art world, for the added freedom to refuse categorization.”
This exhibition is drawn from NOMA’s permanent collection, the archive of the Robert Gordy estate, and generous loans from private collections.
Visitors can expect to see:
- Over a dozen paintings from the 1950’s–1980’s demonstrating Gordy’s career-long exploration of color, form, and pattern.
- Never-before-exhibited preparatory studies, drawings, and Gordy’s sketchbook, which demonstrate the artist’s process—often refining expressive renderings of figures and landscapes into hard-edged compositions.
- Late monotypes and prints that show Gordy’s return to interest in bust-like portraits he first explored in drawings and paintings as a student.
During his lifetime, Gordy was one of New Orleans’s most influential and widely known artists, with a national and international profile. His works were shown at galleries in New York, Chicago, and New Orleans; in solo exhibitions across the United States and in Scotland; and in significant group exhibitions, including the 1973 Whitney Biennial and a 1980 exhibition at PS1 in New York.