Cleve Gray created works that contained fields of color applied with such varied unconventional techniques as pouring, staining, and sponging paint onto the surface of his canvases. Next he added certain gestural marks that had their root source in Chinese calligraphy and other ancient archaeological signs which can be seen in many of his works.Gray was inspired and greatly influenced in the 1960's by such fellow contemporary American abstract expressionist artists as Jackson Pollock, Clyfford Still, Mark Rothko and Helen Frankenthaler. As a result of these artistic influences he began to produce large paintings which combined expanses of pure color and spontaneous calligraphic gestures to create lyrical abstract compositions. The American artist and iconic gallery owner Betty Parsons described Gray as "a painter who jumped the romantic fence into an ancient field of signs and symbols."
Over the course of an artistic career that spanned more than fifty years Cleve Gray produced a prodigious, varied, and inspiring body of work that bears testimony to a brilliant mind that continuously challenged his own creative processes as well as the world around him. In many ways Gray was literally "born to paint". Fascinated with color at age six he won a prize for a watercolor of his mother seated at the piano in the living room of their two floor apartment on the upper west side of Manhattan. Following graduation from Phillips Andover Academy Gray was initially bent on studying art in Europe but chose instead to attend Princeton University at the request of his father. At Princeton the young artist studied history of art and philosophy and was first exposed to the abstract expressionist movement as well as to both Chinese and Japanese art. All these disciplines would have a profound effect on the young artist and his later work. Gray graduated Phi Beta Kappa and summa cum laude from Princeton; his thesis on Yuan Dynasty landscape painting is used as a teaching tool even to this day.
Primarily an oil painter, by around 1967 Gray had given up the medium in favor or the quicker drying and more translucent Liquitex acrylic. At this time as well his compositions began shifting to more vertical forms suggestive of the human figure. These transitions were solidified in a large series (which Gray didn’t consider a series) of paintings done in the Hawaiian Islands in 1970-71. Awarded a six-month artist-in-residence position at the Honolulu Academy of Arts in 1970 Gray moved his family to a small village on the north shore of Ouahu. Traveling extensively around the islands, Gray was inspired by the verticality of nature he encountered in the form of volcanoes, blow holes, rising and falling ocean waves, and monumental waterfalls. The explosive color Gray encountered on the islands was another inspiration, evident in all of the works from the period. Pele, the Goddess of Fire and Volcanoes, plays a significant role in the mythology of the creation of the Hawaiian Islands.
Immediately after Gray’s return from Hawaii he created his most ambitious project, Threnody, 14 monumental canvases dedicated to victims of the Vietnam War commissioned for the Neuberger Museum of Art, New York.
After graduating from Phillips Andover Academy, Cleve Gray attended Princeton University graduating Phi Beta Kappa and summa cum laude, his thesis on Chinese Yuan Dynasty landscape painting. His interest in Eastern philosophy and calligraphy would make itself evident in many paintings through his career. Gray later studied painting under Jacques Villon and André Lhote in Paris in the years following World War II.
In the 1960s Gray was inspired by, and greatly influenced by, such fellow contemporary American abstract expressionist artists as Jackson Pollock, Clyfford Still, Mark Rothko and Helen Frankenthaler. As a result he began to produce large canvases which combined fields of color applied with varied unconventional techniques including pouring, staining, and sponging paint onto the surface of his canvases. Many include gestural marks rooted in Chinese calligraphy and other ancient archaeological signs. American artist and iconic gallery owner Betty Parsons described Gray at this point in his career as "a painter who jumped the romantic fence into an ancient field of signs and symbols."
Over the course of an artistic career that spanned more than fifty years Cleve Gray produced a prodigious, varied, and inspiring body of work that bears testimony to a brilliant mind that continuously challenged his own creative processes as well as the world around him. In many ways Gray was literally “born to paint”. Fascinated with color at age six he won a prize for a watercolor of his mother seated at the piano in the living room of their two-floor apartment on the upper west side of Manhattan.
Provenance: Estate of the artist