Father of the famous Hollywood actor in the 1940's was part of the terms of the abstract expressionists and studied with the famous artist Hans Hofmann

If you are asked, who is Robert De Niro (Robert de Niro), you will, of course, said that it is a famous actor. However, the outstanding Robert De Niro (as Francis Bacon), knows the history of the two. August 19, in the exhibition hall fund BBK in Bilbao opened an exhibition devoted to works by Robert De Niro-Senior (Robert de Niro Sr.), The father of Hollywood actor. It can be seen 25 paintings created by them in 1950-80-ies.

Robert De Niro Senior was born in 1922 in the city Sirakyuz (units of New York, USA), in a family of Italian immigrants. At the outset of his career, he was inspired by works of such artists as Ralph Pearson (Ralph Pearson), Josef Albers (Josef Albers), and Hans Hofmann (Hans Hofmann). In the last de Niro senior even took lessons. Hofmann was an outstanding theorist of abstract art, and perhaps if it were not for his teachings, the American abstract expressionism was not as we know it now. U Hofmann studied famous artists Mark Rothko (Mark Rothko) , and Joan Mitchell (Joan Mitchell), a famous art critic Clement Greenberg (Clement Greenberg) , and Virginia Admiral (Virginia Admiral), which later became the wife of De Niro-senior. Incidentally, Hofmann called the Admiral De Niro and his best pupils. The couple were prominent representatives of the New York Bohemian 1940's. Among them were friends of such person, as Henry Miller (Henry Miller), Tennessee Williams (Tennessee Williams) and Robert Duncan (Robert Duncan).

In 1946, the first solo exhibition of Robert De Niro, a senior. It was in the gallery Art of This Century, which the owner was the famous Peggy Guggenheim (Peggy Guggenheim). The exhibition was very warmly accepted by critics. Clement Greenberg, known for his support for creation of abstract expressionists, compared the work of De Niro with the best artists of the Paris art school. Many representatives of the New York avant-garde 1940's, such as Ed Reinhardt (Ad Reinhardt), said that «advanced» Painting XX century must be extremely abstract, but De Niro does not renounced figurative elements. He loved the French painting of XIX century, in particular the work of Corot (Jean-Baptiste Camille Corot), Ingres (Jean Auguste Dominique Ingres) and Delacroix (Eugène Delacroix). He also loved the modernists Pierre Bonnard (Pierre Bonnard), Henri Matisse (Henri Matisse), Andre Derena (André Derain) and Haim Soutine (Chaim Soutine) . Style De Niro is a wholly to 1960. He wrote landscapes, still lifes, nudity. His art is close to the work of the representatives of the movement of San Francisco schools, such as Richard Dibenkorn (Richard Diebenkorn) and David Park (David Park), who abandoned abstraction in favor of figurative images.

Robert De Niro senior died in 1993. His works are in collections of such museums as the Metropolitan, the Whitney and MoMA in New York, the Museum Hirshhorna in Washington and California Museum in Auckland. The exhibition in Bilbao last until September 27.

Material prepared Yulia Maksimova

Sources: artdaily.org , masdearte.com , artinvestment.ru