Gregory Gillespie

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Gregory Gillespie (November 29, 1936 – April 26, 2000) was an American magic realist painter.

He was born in Roselle Park, New Jersey. After graduating from high school, he became a nondegree student at Cooper Union in New York. In 1959 he married Frances Cohen (1939 – 1998), who was also an artist, and the following year they moved to San Francisco where Gillespie studied at the San Francisco Art Institute.

In 1962 he received the first of two Fulbright-Hays grants, for travel to Italy to study the work of Masaccio. He lived and worked in Florence for two years, and in Rome for six years, studying the works of such Renaissance masters as Carpaccio, Mantegna, and Carlo Crivelli, who was a particular favorite of Gillespie.[1] During this time he was awarded three Chester Dale Fellowships and a Louis Comfort Tiffany grant, and in 1966 he had his first solo show, at the Forum Gallery in New York. He returned to the United States in 1970.

He exhibited in several Whitney Biennials, and in 1977 the Hirshhorn Museum organized a touring retrospective of his work. The Hirshhorn Museum has at least fourteen works by Gillespie in its collection (see external links). According to Askart.com [1], Gillespie's work is also in the collections of the Whitney Museum, the Arkansas Arts Center, and the Butler Institute of American Art, among others.

Gillespie became known for meticulously painted figurative paintings, landscapes, and self portraits, often with a fantastical element. Many of his early works were made by painting over photographs cut from newspapers or magazines, transforming the scenes through photographic collage and by adding imaginary elements. He often combined media in an unorthodox way to create shrine-like assemblages.

He was found dead in his studio in Belchertown, Massachusetts, apparently a suicide by hanging, on April 26, 2000.


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[edit] Notes

  1. ^ Lerner, 1977, p. 22

[edit] References

  • Lerner, Abram (1977). Gregory Gillespie. Washington: [Published for the] Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Smithsonian Institution, by Smithsonian Institution Press. OCLC 3397187

[edit] External links