Ron Gorchov, Painter Who Challenged Viewers’ Perceptions, Dies at 90

Ron Gorchov at his studio in Brooklyn in 2012. Dissatisfied with painting on a flat rectilinear surface, he began creating pieces that were saddle-shaped. Credit: Brian Buckley

Ron Gorchov, an abstract painter known for vividly colored, saddle-shaped canvases that curved away from the wall and gently warped the viewer’s perception, died on Aug. 18 at his home in Red Hook, Brooklyn. He was 90.

His death was confirmed by his Manhattan gallery, Cheim & Read. His family said the cause was lung cancer.

A tall, solidly built man with a kindly face, Mr. Gorchov may have been the closest thing the New York art world had to a gentle giant in the late 20th century. He was soft-spoken and approachable, with a relaxed manner. In a 2006 interview with The Brooklyn Rail, an art newspaper, he said that his paintings came not from angst but from “reverie, and luck” and “out of leisure.” He attracted a wide following among younger painters, particularly in the last 15 years of his life, when his work enjoyed a new prominence.

Mr. Gorchov was one of many painters who, in the 1970s, ignored rumors of the medium’s death while rejecting the scale, slickness and purity of Minimalist abstraction. These artists personalized abstract painting in all sorts of ways, for instance by adding images, working small or using quirky geometry. Several, including Ralph Humphrey, Robert Mangold, Richard Tuttle, Elizabeth Murray, John Torreano, Lynda Benglis, Marilyn Lenkowsky and Guy Goodwin, put an idiosyncratic, intuitive spin on a Minimalist staple — the shaped canvas. Mr. Gorchov did, too. But he was older, and his art blended some of the grandeur of 1950s Abstract Expressionism with the more skeptical, humorous attitudes of the ’70s.

Maurice Ronald Gorchov was born on April 15, 1930, in Chicago to Herman Noah and Grace (Bloomfield) Gorchov. His father was an entrepreneur. His mother was an artist who had studied painting at the Art Institute of Chicago and who, “began to give me ideas about art pretty early” he said in an unpublished 2017 interview with Hans Ulrich Obrist, artistic director of the Serpentine Galleries in London.

When he was 14, Mr. Gorchov began taking Saturday art classes at the Art Institute. In 1946 and 1947 he took night classes there. When he was 15 he began working as a lifeguard, his 6-foot-4 frame enabling him to pass for 18, the required age. At 18, he decided to become a painter.

Ron Gorchov, Painter With Curved Canvases, Dies At Age 90

Ron Gorchov at his Brooklyn Studio. Photo by Brian Buckley, 2012.

Ron Gorchov, the artist famous for his curved, saddle-shaped canvases, died on Tuesday at the age of 90.

Gorchov’s death was announced by Cheim and Reid Gallery of New York, which had co-represented him. Ron Gorchov was most famous for his curved canvases that almost made them a sculpture in their own right. These saddle-type canvases were sometimes stacked across the wall. Gorchov used to staple linen to the frames and painted them white, followed by layers of several colours. The end result didn’t hide the staples and left underlying colours exposed – but Gorchov preferred this ‘clumsy’ style. He said in a 2013 interview that he didn’t seek perfection; he liked the illusion of perfection.

The painter Ron Gorchov, known for his distinctively curved canvases, has died at 90.

Ron Gorchov at his Brooklyn Studio. Photo by Brian Buckley, 2012.

The painter Ron Gorchov, best known for his vividly-painted and distinctly-shaped canvases, died on Tuesday. News of his death was announced by Cheim & Read, which represents the artist in New York. He was 90 years old.

Gorchov was born in 1930 in Chicago, and began studying art at the age of 14, when he took Saturday classes at the Art Institute of Chicago. In 1953, he moved to New York, where he became acquainted with acolytes of the New York School, including Mark Rothko and John Graham, among others. Gorchov supported his wife and son by working as a lifeguard until his breakout in 1960, when he was featured in a group show at the Whitney Museum and had his first solo exhibition at Tibor de Nagy Gallery.

While his self-described “abstract surrealist” style was indebted to the Abstract Expressionist titans of the day, Gorchov is perhaps most famous for his experiments with canvas. In 1967, after a brief hiatus from painting, Gorchov created what would become his signature bowed-frame canvas for the first time in Rothko’s studio. The concave works, which resemble shields or saddles, were made by stapling linen or canvas to a bent wooden frame, which Gorchov would then paint with pared down forms rendered in thin, vivid pigments reminiscent of Henri Matisse. The works walk the line between sculpture and painting, and placed Gorchov among the ranks of artists experimenting with shaped canvases, including Ellsworth Kelly, Frank Stella, Richard Tuttle, and Blinky Palermo.

Gorchov largely stayed in this mode throughout his career, and in 1975 his dedication to abstract experimentation landed him a solo exhibition at Fischbach Gallery as well as a spot in that year’s Whitney Biennial. The following year, he participated in “Rooms,” the legendary first exhibition at P.S. 1 Contemporary Art Center (now MoMA PS1).

Ron Gorchov Dead: Acclaimed Painter Dies at 90

Ron Gorchov.
©MICHAEL AVEDON

Ron Gorchov, an artist whose work often took the form of saddle-shaped canvases with minimalist forms painted onto them, died at 90 on August 18. His death was announced by New York’s Cheim & Read gallery, which co-represented him alongside Maurani Mercier gallery in Brussels, Modern Art in London, and Thomas Brambilla in Bergamo, Italy.

Since 1967, Gorchov created canvases that are curved in such a way that they arc away from the wall, jutting toward the viewer in a manner that lends them a sculptural quality. Sometimes, the paintings appeared in monumental stacks, running up tall walls. Works of the kind have accrued a cult following in New York, where Gorchov was long based, with curator Robert Storr among his most vocal proponents.

In 2005, on the occasion of a show at Vito Schnabel Gallery, Storr wrote, “Ron Gorchov could have been a contender—more times over than any other painter of his generation. If he gets the breaks and goes the distance this time, he will be one of the greatest comeback kids the New York School has ever seen. What are the odds on this happening?”

Many critics have praised Gorchov for retaining his commitment to abstract painting at a time when the medium was presumed dead. During the 1970s, after Minimalism’s rise, many artists in the city had moved on to different mediums, in the process prioritizing lofty ideas about how art existed in relation to its viewer. But Gorchov, along with a cohort of painters that included Bill Jensen, Lynda Benglis, and Robert Mangold, continued to work in painting anyway, and their work evidenced an engagement with form that was considered bygone.

Gorchov crafted his canvases by stapling linen to a frame, then adding a layer of white primer and several layers of pigment. No attempts were made to hide the staples, and Gorchov’s strokes were often loose, leaving multiple colors exposed. In a 1975 review of Gorchov’s show at Fischbach Gallery, Roberta Smith called the technique “clumsy”—which she invoked as an endearing quality.

In a 2013 interview with fellow artist Natalie Provosty, Gorchov said, “I don’t want to be the kind of artist that feels he has to make perfect work. Work doesn’t need to be perfect. I like the illusion of perfection.”