Artist and artists’ rights proponent Chapman Kelley dead at 88

Artists’ rights lawyer Sergio Muñoz Sarmiento said, “Chapman was a great artist and a strong and relentless defender of artists’ rights. His fight to keep his major sculpture, Wildflower Works, alive and in view against the Chicago Park District’s wish to destroy it was inspirational, and a beacon for other artists wishing to fight to keep art alive. I will miss Chapman.”   In the wake of Kelley’s first New York exhibition in 1963, he was elated to learn Life Magazine had published an article about it, Sold Out Art. The show featured work by Lee Bontecou, Marcel Cavalla, Sidney Goodman, Robert Indiana, Jasper Johns, Wesley Klug, Robert Kulicke, Roy Lichtenstein, Pablo Picasso, Wayne Thiebaud, Andy Warhol, Tom Wesselman and Jane Wilson.   The same year Kelley received public recognition from the American Academy of Arts and Letters for his oil on canvas painting Implacement Dune. As a current member of the Academy’s voting committee, iconic American realist painter Edward Hopper affirmed Kelley’s stature.   Kelley’s work is in 1,000+ public and private collections, including the one of Elaine de Kooning. Prolific art collector Joseph H. Hirshhorn, founding donor of the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden on the National Mall, and a collector of Kelley’s work, gifted a Kelley diptych to President Lyndon B. Johnson and First Lady Ladybird. Kelley was the Johnson’s final social visitor on January 20, 1973 at the LBJ Ranch in Stonewall, Texas. 36 hours later, the President expired. Stonewall is Johnson’s birthplace and deathplace.

Page 3 of 5 | Previous page | Next page