Robert Gordy is considered one of the most original and creative Southern artists of the 20th century. Upon his untimely death from AIDS in 1986, the artist bequeathed his estate to the New Orleans Museum of Art, to benefit the museum’s collection and its programs. This exhibition features works on paper and canvases from this body of work, including work that has not been on view since the artist’s 1981 exhibition at The New Orleans Museum of Art.
Gordy’s work is renowned for a rare sensitivity in his treatment of color, and exquisite compositional patterning (utilizing a technique self-described as “knitting”). Beyond surface aesthetic, however, Gordy’s work is shot through with a riveting emotional reality, informed by the French Symbolist-Surrealist tradition, and most clearly present in the monotype portraiture of his later career.
