Peter Golfinopoulos
Encyclopedia
Peter Golfinopoulos, an American artist, was born in Manhattan in 1928. His
paintings are marked by a variety of highly individualistic modes.
Art Students League of New York
, 1950–1951. Studied with Edwin Dickinson
and George Grosz
.
Columbia University
, BFA (1956) and MFA (1958). Golfinopoulos’s main interests were philosophy and art history. He pursued graduate work in philosophy with Robert Cummings
and Albert Hofstadter
and studied extensively with art historian Meyer Schapiro
. After leaving Columbia, Golfinopoulos remained in contact with Schapiro, their conversations were influential to his development.
After earning his MFA, in 1958 Golfinopoulos had his first one-man show at Collette Roberts’ Grand Central Moderns
and began teaching part-time at Columbia’s School of Fine Arts. Offered tenure in 1968, feeling that the increase in hours and responsibility would interfere with painting, he decided to leave. Later, he accepted an offer from Stuart Klonis, then head of the Art Students League, to teach one afternoon a week. He maintains that commitment to the present day, seeing it as an ethical imperative.
In 1963 Golfinopoulos met Charles Egan of the Charles Egan Gallery
, who became his dealer and his friend. In Egan he found someone whose connection to history, and whose understanding and respect for art, made him an ideal guide for a young artist. Through Egan he met art historian H. H. Arnason and art critic Harris Rosenstein, whose aesthetic convictions and ongoing conversations provided additional grounding and moral support. His friendship with Egan continued after the gallery closed in 1972.
The years 1985 to 1995 produced “Comic Allegories,” a group of non-naturalistic narrative paintings provoked by changing situations in the world. They represent the artist’s only excursion into figuration.
“Charms,” completed in 2005, are paintings of sensual order. They mark a break with narrative as a generative impulse and a return to a smaller, more intimate format.
The most recent works are colorful speculations in and on idleness.
Golfinopoulos’s works are in numerous private and corporate collections.
paintings are marked by a variety of highly individualistic modes.
Life/education
Served for three years in the U.S. Air Force.Art Students League of New York
Art Students League of New York
The Art Students League of New York is an art school located on West 57th Street in New York City. The League has historically been known for its broad appeal to both amateurs and professional artists, and has maintained for over 130 years a tradition of offering reasonably priced classes on a...
, 1950–1951. Studied with Edwin Dickinson
Edwin Dickinson
Edwin Walter Dickinson was an American painter and draftsman best known for psychologically charged self-portraits, quickly painted landscapes, which he called premier coups, and large, hauntingly enigmatic paintings involving figures and objects painted from observation, in which he invested his...
and George Grosz
George Grosz
Georg Ehrenfried Groß was a German artist known especially for his savagely caricatural drawings of Berlin life in the 1920s...
.
Columbia University
Columbia University
Columbia University in the City of New York is a private, Ivy League university in Manhattan, New York City. Columbia is the oldest institution of higher learning in the state of New York, the fifth oldest in the United States, and one of the country's nine Colonial Colleges founded before the...
, BFA (1956) and MFA (1958). Golfinopoulos’s main interests were philosophy and art history. He pursued graduate work in philosophy with Robert Cummings
Robert Cummings
Charles Clarence Robert Orville Cummings , mostly known professionally as Robert Cummings but sometimes as Bob Cummings, was an American film and television actor....
and Albert Hofstadter
Albert Hofstadter
Albert Hofstadter was a twentieth century American philosopher.-Life and career:Hofstadter taught at Columbia University , the University of California at Santa Cruz and the New School for Social Research .-Thoughts on the Later Heidegger:As a Heidegger scholar, Hofstadter contends that Heidegger...
and studied extensively with art historian Meyer Schapiro
Meyer Schapiro
Meyer Schapiro was a Lithuanian-born American art historian known for forging new art historical methodologies that incorporated an interdisciplinary approach to the study of works of art...
. After leaving Columbia, Golfinopoulos remained in contact with Schapiro, their conversations were influential to his development.
After earning his MFA, in 1958 Golfinopoulos had his first one-man show at Collette Roberts’ Grand Central Moderns
Grand Central School of Art
The Grand Central School of Art was an American art school in New York City, founded in 1923 by the painters Edmund Greacen, Walter Leighton Clark and John Singer Sargent. The school was established and run by the Grand Central Art Galleries, an artists' cooperative founded by Sargent, Greacen,...
and began teaching part-time at Columbia’s School of Fine Arts. Offered tenure in 1968, feeling that the increase in hours and responsibility would interfere with painting, he decided to leave. Later, he accepted an offer from Stuart Klonis, then head of the Art Students League, to teach one afternoon a week. He maintains that commitment to the present day, seeing it as an ethical imperative.
In 1963 Golfinopoulos met Charles Egan of the Charles Egan Gallery
Charles Egan Gallery
The Charles Egan Gallery opened at 63 East 57th Street in about 1945, when Charles Egan was in his mid-30's. Egan's artists helped him fix up the gallery: "Isamu Noguchi did the lighting... Willem de Kooning and Franz Kline painted the walls."...
, who became his dealer and his friend. In Egan he found someone whose connection to history, and whose understanding and respect for art, made him an ideal guide for a young artist. Through Egan he met art historian H. H. Arnason and art critic Harris Rosenstein, whose aesthetic convictions and ongoing conversations provided additional grounding and moral support. His friendship with Egan continued after the gallery closed in 1972.
Work
The early paintings, 1958 to 1964, are intimate Cartesian dreams. From 1964 to 1971, involvement with Joycean myth brought imaginative, outgoing, precisely measured, and strikingly large abstract narrative constructions. Still working in the non-representational vocabulary of abstraction, there was a shift in the early seventies to loose, open, emotionally charged dramatic confrontations.The years 1985 to 1995 produced “Comic Allegories,” a group of non-naturalistic narrative paintings provoked by changing situations in the world. They represent the artist’s only excursion into figuration.
“Charms,” completed in 2005, are paintings of sensual order. They mark a break with narrative as a generative impulse and a return to a smaller, more intimate format.
The most recent works are colorful speculations in and on idleness.
Museum collections
- Hirshhorn Museum, Washington, D.C.
- Corcoran Gallery, Washington, D.C.
- Brooklyn Museum of Art
- Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston
- Columbus Museum of ArtColumbus Museum of ArtThe Columbus Museum of Art is an art museum located in downtown Columbus, Ohio. Formed in 1878 as the Columbus Gallery of Fine Arts, it was the first art museum to register its charter with the state of Ohio.-Building:...
, Columbus, Ohio - Cornell UniversityCornell UniversityCornell University is an Ivy League university located in Ithaca, New York, United States. It is a private land-grant university, receiving annual funding from the State of New York for certain educational missions...
, Ithaca, New YorkIthaca, New YorkThe city of Ithaca, is a city in upstate New York and the county seat of Tompkins County, as well as the largest community in the Ithaca-Tompkins County metropolitan area... - Herbert F. Johnson Museum of ArtHerbert F. Johnson Museum of ArtThe Herbert F. Johnson Museum of Art is an art museum located on the northwest corner of the Arts Quad on the main campus of Cornell University in Ithaca, New York. It is most well known for its distinctive concrete facade, its collection which includes two windows from Frank Lloyd Wright's Darwin...
- University of Iowa Museum of Art (housed at the Figge Art MuseumFigge Art MuseumThe Figge Art Museum is an art museum in Davenport, Iowa. The Figge, as it is commonly known, has an encyclopedic collection and serves as the major art museum for the eastern Iowa and western Illinois region...
) - Rhode Island School of DesignRhode Island School of DesignRhode Island School of Design is a fine arts and design college located in Providence, Rhode Island. It was founded in 1877. Located at the base of College Hill, the RISD campus is contiguous with the Brown University campus. The two institutions share social, academic, and community resources and...
Golfinopoulos’s works are in numerous private and corporate collections.