Gregory 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. The artist has 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."
Amenoff lives in New York City and Ulster County, New York. He is the recipient of numerous awards from organizations including the American Academy of Arts and Letters, National Endowment for the Arts, New York State Council on the Arts, the Tiffany Foundation, and the 2011 John Solomon Guggenheim Fellowship.
Amenoff served as President of the National Academy of Design from 2001-2005. He is a founding board member of the CUE Art Foundation in New York City and serves as the CUE Art Foundation's Curator Governor. Amenoff has taught at Columbia for nearly two decades, where he holds the Eve and Herman Gelman Chair of Visual Arts and is currently the Chair of the Visual Arts Division in the School of the Arts.
