Robert Neffson

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

This article does not cite any references or sources. (February 2008)
Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources. Unverifiable material may be challenged and removed.

Robert Neffson is an American painter currently known for his street scenes of various cities around the world, as well as his early still lifes and figure paintings¹.

Neffson was born in New York City on December 28, 1949, and raised in Little Neck, New York. He began attending classes at the Art Students League of New York in 1964, under the instruction of artists such as Lennart Anderson² and Sidney Dickinson³. As a student he copied old masters at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York and the Boston Museum of Fine Arts. His study of, among others, the painters Jan Vermeer, Thomas Eakins, Camille Corot, and Canaletto, developed his skills further. While attending the Boston University College of Fine Arts, from which he graduated cum laude in 1971¹, Neffson’s work attracted the attention of his professors, including James Weeks and the abstract expressionist painter, Philip Guston.

He also studied at the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture in Maine and the Tanglewood Institute in Lenox, Massachusetts, both on full scholarship. Achieving his Master’s Degree in Fine Arts for Painting in 1973, again from Boston University, Neffson taught briefly at the DeCordova Museum in Lincoln, Massachusetts, and Fisher College in Boston. He received the Massachusetts Arts and Humanities Foundation⁴ and the Elizabeth T. Greenshields Memorial Foundation⁵ Grants in support of his work.

In 1976, his life and work were significantly changed when Neffson was awarded the Fulbright-Hayes Fellowship for Painting¹ in Rome. During his stay in Italy, he met William Bailey⁶ at the American Academy in Rome, who had a strong influence on his still life paintings at the time. Upon his return in 1977, Neffson was given a year long Artist-in-Residence Grant by the Roswell Museum and Art Center⁷ in New Mexico, followed by teaching positions at Arizona State University in Tempe and Pennsylvania State University. At that time he received a Pennsylvania Council on the Arts Visual Artist Grant⁸ in 1983. He has also taught at Pratt Institute in Brooklyn, New York and has continued to teach Painting from Life for many years at the Art Students League^1,2.

Neffson was a member of the First Street Gallery⁹ in New York from 1978 to 1985, during which time he had numerous solo exhibitions, as well as group shows with such fellow artists as Catherine Murphy. While represented from 1985 to 1998 by Gallery Henoch¹⁰ in New York City, he was inspired by Richard Estes and Chuck Close and was among a group of second-generation photorealist painters that were exhibiting in SoHo galleries such as O.K. Harris Works of Art¹¹ and Louis Meisel Gallery¹².

In 2004, Neffson was commissioned to create a painting of the near-completed new 7 World Trade Center building, which was presented to developer Larry Silverstein of Silverstein Properties in a ceremony presided over by New York State Governor George Pataki and New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg^1,2,13.

In 2007, Neffson authored the catalog to the British painter Clive Head’s¹⁵ exhibition at Marlborough Fine Arts, London¹⁶. The text consists of an introduction and letters between the two artists centered on their discussion of the creative process¹⁷.

Robert Neffson joined Hammer Galleries¹ in 1998, the New York institution which recently celebrated its 80th anniversary. He has also exhibited at London’s Plus One Gallery¹⁴ since 2005. He continues to produce works that are exhibited and collected internationally.

Robert Neffson is currently based in New York City, where he lives with his wife, Karin Choy and their dog, Bagel.

Neffson sees the geometry of the city foremost—the parallel lines of the architecture, the grids of the streets and windows, the angular shadows the sun casts between skyscrapers. One of Neffson’s fortes is sorting out messy networks of objects, shadows, and reflections in store windows, which he does by systematically breaking down each component into a series of perfect planes. ARTNews, November 2004