Cleve Gray

Long overdue, this is the first retrospective study of the work of painter Cleve Gray (b. 1918), who began his artistic career in the late 1940s and '50s when Abstract Expressionism was sweeping the New York art scene. Although an abstractionist, Gray has pursued his own vision outside the trends of the international art world.Nicholas Fox Weber deftly combines biography and critical analysis in his text, which is based on many visits to Gray's studio and extensive interviews with the artist.Superb colorplates present powerful and moving works of art from throughout Gray's career. Notable among these are full-page views of Threnody, the remarkable multipanel painting Gray created as a response to the Vietnam War for the Neuberger Museum at the State University of New York at Purchase.Photographs show the artist as a young man; with his wife, the writer Francine du Plessix Gray; and at work. An exhibition of Gray's paintings opens at the Butler Institute of American Art in Youngstown, Ohio, in December 1998, and travels to Colby College in Waterville, Maine, and to the Neuberger Museum.