Alfred Raymond Russell: Chronology
1920, May 22: Born to Raymond Russell of English stock, 22 ,and Mildred Henkle, of Welsh Jewish heritage, 18—both originally from Wilmington, Delaware—in Oak Park, Chicago. They later move to Detroit and Grosse Point, Michigan, where Raymond works as a design engineer for the Ford Motor Company.
1926: Mildred, age 24, divorces Raymond and abandons her family to pursue a career in show business. Alfred, his younger sister Joanne, and his younger brother Richard are brought up by their grandparents in Wilmington, Delaware until Raymond remarries and brings them back to Detroit. Deeply affected by Mildred’s abandonment, Alfred is plagued by trust issues all his life. He never sees her again. (She lives to be 86, dying in 1988.)
1935-1945: Russell began studying art at the Detroit Institute of Arts: making student work—influenced by Picasso, Giorgio de Chirico and Surrealism.
1937: Travels across the United States by bus to see America. In New York, meets his father’s friend, the abstract painter Carl Holty, who will become a friend, and much later, a colleague at Brooklyn College.
1940: Spends part of the year in New York studying with Carl Holty and William McNulty at the Arts Students League.
1941: Ann Arbor, then New York. Russell resides at 147 East 34th St., NYC and registers for the draft July 16.
1942: Pursues a general undergraduate education at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor; studies literature under W.H. Auden; studies analytic geometry under Prof. Karpinsky; studies art under J. P. Slueser. (It is unclear when Russell began studying at the university and which semesters he spent elsewhere).
1943: Completes a BA at the University at Michigan. and studies writing and literature at the University at Iowa on a fellowship. Befriends Philip Guston, and participates in the Michigan Artists Annual at the Detroit Institute of Arts. Begins working at Stanley William Hayter’s Atelier 17.
1944: Shows at the Detroit Institute of Arts and a group show at the Weyhe Gallery, New York. A print is presented in the Detroit Institute of the Arts exhibition of Michigan Artists. Resides at 145 11th St., NYC.
1945: Another group show at the Weyhe Gallery and the Detroit Institute of the Arts, where he wins the print purchase award. Begins graduate work at Columbia University.
1945-1952: Abstract explorations begin when working in Atelier 17; his earlier study of geometry leads to structural explorations in his abstract paintings. Later, non-Euclidean geometries and the structure of modern physics enter his works. Everpresent is the influence of pre-Socratic Greek thinkers and the Russian Suprematists.
1946 Completes an MA at Columbia University in Greek and Roman Art under Margarete Bieber. Studies Modern Art with Meyer Schapiro and writes about a Kandinsky painting. Participates in the exhibition Modern Drawings at the Chicago Art Institute. Lives at 178 West 82nd St., Apt 5. Appears in the Detroit Institute of the Arts print exhibition and at the Leicester Gallery, London, with other members of Atelier 17.
1947: With an introduction from Hayter, Russell is hired to teach printmaking at Brooklyn College Art Department after it has been re-formed, under the direction of Serge Chermayeff, as the Department of Design and headed by Robert Jay Wolff following Bauhaus principles transferred from the Chicago Institute of Design. Becomes a close and lifelong friend of Ad Reinhardt. Shows in 12 exhibitions, among them: Bucholz Gallery, Modern Prints, of both European and American artists; Chicago Art Institute’s Abstract and Surrealist Painting in the U.S.A.; and his first one-person exhibition as a member of the Laurel Gallery, New York, October 4-24. Other notable exhibitions were World Prints at the Leicester Gallery, London, in March; Detroit Institute of the Arts, Seattle Art Museum, Print Annual; Laurel Gallery group show; Weyhe Gallery, American Painters; Argent Gallery, Prints; Philadelphia Print Club; the Brooklyn Museum Print Annual; and a circulating exhibition by the American Federation of Fine Arts. Alfred produces an engraving for an E.E. Cummings’ fairy tale The Old Man who said, “Why?.”
1947: Separates from his wife Carol Bundy in NYC (marriage date unknown; divorce summons served to Carol in October 1948 on the grounds of adultery).
1948: Lives at 229 East 11th St., Apt 18. With letters of introduction from Stanley William Hayter, Russell travels to Paris where he meets the abstract painters Nicolas de Staël, Wols, Vieira Da Silva, Camille Bryen, Capogrossi, Georges Mathieu and others. He first presents his work in a group show curated by Georges Mathieu and Camille Bryen, at the Gallerie des Deux IÎles in Paris, and later at the Salon des Realities Novelles, Paris. In collaboration with Georges Mathieu, Russell tries to organize the first confrontation between American and French artists at the Galerie du Montparnasse, but they had to make do with works on paper, as the American galleries were reluctant to send paintings that might be lost in transport to Europe. The American works were to be by Jackson Pollock, Mark Tobey, Willem de Kooning, Arshile Gorky, Ad Reinhardt, Mark Rothko, Alfred Russell and Walter Sauer. These would have been seen against works by Camille Bryen, Hans Hartung, Francis Picabia, Wols, and Georges Mathieu.
1948: He meets the photographer Robert Déscharnes and his sister, the artist Andrée. Andrée and Alfred fall in love. Participates in a group show at Laurel Gallery, the Brooklyn Museum Print Annual, and the American Federation of Arts. Russell has another one-person exhibition in his hometown of Grosse Pointe, Michigan at the Alexander Girard Gallery, March 20-April 20. He refers to his first mature abstractions as Tentative Signs.
1949: On April 24, Alfred is divorced from Carol Bundy; and on April 27, Alfred marries Andrée Berthe A. M. Descharnes at City Hall with Ad Reinhardt as witness.
1949: Russell’s big shows in New York include an invitation to exhibit with American Abstract Artists at the Riverside Museum and the Whitney Museum Annual of American Painting, also at the Brooklyn Museum Print Annual, in which he receives a print purchase prize. He appears in a Laurel group show, his last with the gallery. He later joins Peridot Gallery and is in a group exhibition. In Paris, he again exhibits in the Salon des Realites Nouvelles, and at Galerie Pierre.
1950: Russell has his breakout one-person show at Peridot Gallery, featuring his abstractions, some titled Street paintings. Clement Greenberg and Meyer Schapiro include him as one of 23 artists in their New Talents show at the Sam Kootz Gallery, from April 24-May 13. The Whitney Museum follows suit, including Russell in the Annual of American Painting, in which he receives a museum purchase prize for the painting La Rue de Nevers. The Museum of Modern Art includes him in the traveling exhibition, Calligraphic and Geometric (from May 1950-June 1952.)
1951: Spends much of the year in France painting for his one-person exhibition at Galerie Colette Allendy. Russell’s friend Francis Picabia helps hang his show. Michel Tapié includes him in Véhémences Confrontées at Galerie Nina Dausset along with Pollock and De Kooning, showing opposite works by Wols, Mathieu, Bryen, Hartung, Riopelle, and Capogrossi. Appears in a group show at Studio Paul Facchetti. His work appears at the United States Embassy in Paris in an exhibition of American Graphic Art. From March 27-April 21, Peridot Gallery shows Sculpture by Painters: James Brooks, Arthur Drexler, Seymour Franks, Weldon Kees, Gabor Peterdi, Reginald Pollack, Jackson Pollack, Alfred Russell, Esteban Vicente. In Massachusetts, Highfield Gallery, in association with Egan/Kootz/Parsons/Peridot Galleries, holds a show from July 1-20: Brooks, Cavallon, Franks, Gotlieb, Guston, Kees, Motherwell, Pollack Reinhardt, Resnick, Russell, Tomlin, Tworkov and Vincente; on July 13 Willem de Kooning gives a lecture. Back in New York, he is selected for the Museum of Modern Art’s major exhibition, Fifty Years of Abstract Art in America. He is also represented in the Art Institute of Chicago’s American Painting show and the Brooklyn Museum’s Print Annual. The Whitney Museum again includes one of his Tentative Signs watercolors in its Drawing and Sculpture Annual. He appears in the University of Nebraska Annual of American Painting and the University of Minnesota Print Exhibition. The Museum of Modern Art’s traveling exhibition Calligraphic and Geometric continues, and he has a show at the Highfield Gallery on Cape Cod, Massachusetts. At Peridot Gallery he is featured in Watercolors and Drawings and later in Sculpture by Painters, and again in a September group show and from October 8-November 3 in a one-person show of abstractions, some hinting at figural presences, mostly completed in France.
1952: Lives at 229 East 11th St. in NYC. Is selected for inclusion by Leo Castelli for the Avant-Garde U.S, Painters exhibition at Sidney Janis Gallery in New York, which later travels to the Galerie de France in Paris where it is known as 20 American Painters, Regards sur la Peinture American. Michel Tapié includes Russell in his important publication Un Art Autre: où il s’agit de nouveaux dévidages du réel. Is included in the Whitney Museum’s Annual of Contemporary American Sculpture and Drawing with a Tentative Signs ink drawing, #2, 1951. Participates in the Museum of Modern Art’s loan collection; his work continues in MoMA’s Calligraphy and Geometric traveling show at the Los Angeles Art Museum. At Peridot Gallery his work appears four times in Mixed Media, Feb 25-March 22, Recent Paintings and Sculptures, April-May; New Paintings and Sculptures, September-October; and his one-person show of calligraphic classical figures, October 13-November 8. Abstract work travels in the American Federation of Arts’ exhibition of Avant-Garde Art. His work appears at the St. Louis Art Museum in the show of Fred Olsen’s collection. Paintings also appear in the University of Illinois’ Annual of Contemporary Art, the University of Nebraska’s Survey of Modern Painting, and the Grand Rapids Art Gallery in Michigan. He also appears in the Whitney Museum’s Annual of Contemporary American Painting.
1953: Moves to 17 East 9th St. from 315 East 51th St. Russell is included in the traveling exhibition by the American Federation of Fine Arts’ Selections from the Whitney Annual. He is included in the Second Stable Gallery group show; New York Abstract Painting and Sculpture at the Syracuse Museum of Art, October-November; and Peridot Gallery’s Watercolors, Drawings and Collages. In addition, three University Annual surveys included Russell’s work: University of Illinois, University of Nebraska, and the University of Wisconsin, which holds a Survey of American Drawings. Is also included in the Whitney Museum’s Sculpture and Drawing Annual, his sixth appearance. Russell’s controversial contribution to a panel on The Figure in Painting, held at The Club, March 27—also featuring Paul Brach, Edwin Denby, Al Leslie, Larry Rivers, Mike Lowe, Leon Smith and Leo Steinberg and moderated by Joan Mitchell—is published in the November 15 issue of Magazine of Art. From October 27 to November 14, group show at Peridot with gallery members.
1953-1960: Returns to figurative painting after several trips to Rome and Paris. Is influenced by Pompeian paintings, Derain and Giacometti. While in Europe, makes copies of Raphael, Caravaggio, and Poussin. Begins drawing from Roman sarcophagi in the Louvre.
1954: The Whitney Museum buys Russell’s drawing, Orphic Composition. Two Figures is shown in the 149th Annual at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts.
1955-56: The family spends June and July in Kurt Seligmann’s apartment at Villa Seurat in Paris. Alfred appears in a studio photo for the New York Times magazine on May 8 related to his appearance in the Whitney Museum’s exhibition, The New Decade:1945-1955, Thirty-Five American Artists.
1956: Sabbatical in Paris, lives at the Villa Seurat. Elsie Teresa Russell is born on June 9 in Nevers, France. Alfred meets and befriends Albert Camus. Meets Balthus while copying Caravaggio’s “Fortune Teller’ in the Louvre. Begins a relationship with Mademoiselle magazine, attends a Ravi Shankar concert and draws the musicians for a story in that magazine.
1957: Lives at 315 East 17th St. NYC and at 29 Ave. de L’Observatoire, Paris. Russell has a one-person show at Duveen-Graham Gallery, March 26-April 13, in a one-person show of anti-naturalist figure paintings, fusing Jean Clouet and the Master of Moulins with Derain, De Chirico and Delvaux. Spends several months in Seville illustrating Montherlant’s Don Juan. This moment (1956-58) constitutes a very brief effort to depict a contemporary tableaux.
1958: Publishes an illustration for a story in Mademoiselle magazine, February, page 119. The illustration depicts Alfred and Andrée in Nevers.
1959: Appears in two large New York exhibitions of drawings by American painters, February 16-28, at the New Art Center Gallery and Contemporary American and Italian Drawings at G Gallery, March 10-31. G Gallery produced a magazine devoted to drawings and this show was reproduced in its second issue.
1960: Ruth White Gallery holds a one-person show of impastoed abstractions. ARTnews dubs it one of the 10 best shows of the year. It Is magazine publishes Toward Meta-form and The Wraith of Achilles is also illustrated. Abstract works will appear in group shows through 1962. His studio is at 55 East 28th St.
1960-66: Episodic return to abstract art as a result of studying Matila Ghyka, Theodore Cooke, D’Arcy Thompson, as well as mystic philosophies and alchemy. Influenced by Henri Poincarés mathematical models.
1961: Lives in Nice for part of the year. Becomes associate professor at Brooklyn College.
1962: Lives in Nice for part of the year. Appears in an Atelier 17 exhibition at London’s Institute of Contemporary Art.
1963: Sabbatical in Nice and Greece. Visits Woodstock and Croton-on-Hudson.
1964: In May, purchases a house at 39 Sunset Drive, Croton-on-Hudson, N.Y.
1965-1971: Focuses on figurative painting “to escape the monotony of American life”— travels to Paris and Rome. Discovers late mannerists school of painting: Rome, Florence, Fointainbleau and Prague. Around 1966 is influenced by Pietro da Cortona’s Barbarini Frescoes and by Luca Giordano and the works of Pergamon—especially the Pergamon frieze in Berlin; Roman works in North Africa.
1965: Lives in Nice for part of the year.
1966: Summer in Woodstock, NY. Lives in Cadaques, Nevers, Paris. Visits Woodstock.
1967: Visits his sister in Canada, his father in the Florida Keys.
1968: Visits family in Florida, Canada and his friends the Marons in North Carolina.
1969 On a sabbatical leave, travels to Tangier and rents a house in Nemi, Italy for September/October and another there for November/December.
1970 Visits Nemi, lives at Iserba Casa, Val d’Aosta. Later travels to Tunis, Algeria and Morocco.
1971: Beginning in mid-life Alfred is plagued with a series of illnesses, from psoriasis to Grand Mal seizures, followed by a brain tumor, blood clots, hernias, and later a stroke and Hodgkins Disease.
1972: On sick leave in Paris, also lives in Vicolo del Cinque, Rome.
1973: Andrée sells their home at Croton-on-Hudson. They move to Atlantic Avenue in Brooklyn Heights, later at 826 President St. in Park Slope, Brooklyn. Contributes work to a memorial exhibition for his former dealer Louis Pollack at Peridot Gallery. Visits Greece and Germany.
1974: Alfred takes a sick leave from Brooklyn College. Lives at Vicolo del Cinque, Rome for 6 months. Visits Cadaques, returns to Atlantic Ave, Brooklyn, then moves to Park Slope. Russell retires from Brooklyn College, as Andrée’s career as a fabric designer has enabled her to fully support the family.
1975: Alone in Rome and Umbertide and then with his family in Tunisia, and later Paris and Nevers with Andrée. She is diagnosed with terminal cancer.
1976: Andrée dies of cancer, March 7 in Nevers. Russell travels between Rome, Paris, Nevers, Tourettes and London. In September, Aix en Provence, Cadaqués and Avignon in October, then Nevers, Dieppe, London until December 15.
1977: January in Rome, then Venice, and on to New York and the Chelsea. Joan Silverman, a classical scholar and author, becomes his third wife on November 4 at City Hall. They eventually establish themselves at 201 West 16th Street at Fifth Ave., and later at the Hotel Chelsea in Manhattan and in an apartment near Opera in Paris. He appears in Brooklyn Museum’s Atelier 17 Retrospective, 50th Anniversary Exhibition.
1979: Peter Tatistcheff Gallery, NYC shows his figurative works in a one-person show. The work travels to the Bayly Art Museum at the University of Virginia in Charlottesville for a group show. A major early figure painting Flight, 1957, will remain on loan for some years. In March and again in August-September, he visits Rome, and in November, Nice.
1980: Fear and Flight is lent to a group show at the Weatherspoon Art Gallery at the University of North Carolina, Greensboro, March 23-April 20. Lives in Rome in May.
1981: Travels to Paris in March. (During this period, Russell buys a modest apartment in Paris in the 11th arrondissement, at 45 Rue de Citeaux. Alfred and Joan will keep it until a few years before his death.)
1982: At Joan’s urging after a serious seizure, Russell finally agrees to an operation to remove a benign brain tumor. When a nurse calls to say it is time to go to the hospital, he replies, ”Not this minute, I’m working on something I want to finish,” and keeps painting for another half hour. "That calmed me down!,” Joan reports him saying.
1986: Mary Ryan Gallery holds an exhibition, Atelier 17, with works by Russell.
1988: Notified by a lawyer of his mother, Mildred’s death, Russell receives a large jeweled ring as his inheritance; repulsed, he returns the ring to the lawyer. Three major works are presented in Fictional Images, Contemporary Figurative Painting at Montserrat College of Art in Boston.
1991: During the summer Spoleto Festival, in Charleston, South Carolina, Civitico/Berg Gallery holds a selective retrospective. A catalog is planned but falls short of funding. In San Francisco, Contemporary Realist Gallery holds a one-person show of Alfred’s figurative paintings, September 11-October 5.
2001: Russell's work appears in Between Heaven and Earth: New Classical Movements in the Art Today, Museum voor Moderne Kunst, Ostend, Belgium.
2005: Russell receives the Oscar Williams and Gene Underwood Award, in recognition of his outstanding qualities as an artist. Russell is diagnosed with esophageal cancer.
2007: Serge Guilbaut includes Russell in Be-Bomb, The Transatlantic War of Images and all that Jazz, 1946-1956, Museo National Centro de Arte Reina Sophia, Barcelona, Spain. Alfred is treated for esophageal cancer at NYU Medical Center and enters hospice care in September, pleading to go home to his books and music. He works up to the end, saying that it enables him to empty his mind of his troubles. He dies on September 22, survived by his third wife Joan and his daughter Elsie. An obituary by Roberta Smith appears in The New York Times on October 13.
2021: United States of Abstraction, Artistes Américains en France 1946-1964 at the Musée D’Arts de Nantes and later at Musée Fabre de Montpellier Méditerranée Métropole. Represented with the painting La Rue de Nevers, 1949.
2024-2025: American Artists in France 1945-1962 opens March 2 at the Grey Art Gallery (New York University), New York, running through July 20; after which the show will be on view from September through December at the Addison Gallery of American Art in Andover, MA, and then travel to a third venue from February 2025 through mid-July. Represented by the major Tentative Signs drawing, March 1951.
© 2024 David Carbone