TitleRadix
Artist
Gregory Amenoff
(American, b. 1948)
Date1983
MediumOil on canvas
DimensionsUnframed: 82 × 72 in.
Framed: 84 × 74 1/4 × 2 3/8 in.
SignedTitled, dated and signed on reverse
Credit LineNational Academy of Design, New York, NY, Gift of John Raimondi and Ralph Cantin, 2003
Object number2003.8
Label TextGregory Amenoff was born in Illinois and after graduating from Beloit College, Wisconsin, he began exhibiting in Boston in the early 1970s. By the early 1980s Amenoff had developed an expressive painterly style that was well suited for the successive decade and in many ways fits rightfully in with neo-expressionist painting during that time. Often filled with vaguely vegetal imagery, the artist's work has always been rooted in the landscape, however, and has never eschewed representation entirely.Amenoff has long had an interest in the late-nineteenth and early-twentieth century American romantic landscape painter Albert Pinkham Ryder, whose nocturnal landscapes often teetered on the edge of abstraction. "Radix" illustrates Amenoff's interest in similar dark and foreboding qualities. The artist stated: "I am interested in joining painting with life and therefore experience. The formal issues of painting are necessary in order to make a good painting, and my first responsibility as a painter is to make a good painting. But that is only a vehicle; only a means to an end. I want to say something specific and strong which relates to aspects of our experience."
