Al Loving: 1935 – 2005.
Untitled, 1975.
About:
The New Times published this obituary, June 30, 2005.
Variations on a sex sided object, 1967. This work is part of the permanent collection of the Studio Museum in Harlem.
Al Loving Dies at 69; Abstract Artist Created Vibrant Work
By MARGALIT FOX
Al Loving, a prominent abstract painter and collage artist whose work explored the ways color, space, line and form play out in vibrant counterpoint, died on June 21 at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in Manhattan. He was 69 and lived in Kerhonkson, N.Y.
The cause was complications of lung cancer, his wife, Mara, said.
On his way to the studio.
Mr. Loving first came to public attention with a solo show at the Whitney Museum of American Art in 1969. Crisp and hard-edged, his early paintings were studies in pure geometric form, often depicting arrangements of cubes. His later works were more fluid: layered constructions of heavy paper that had been painted with bright acrylics, cut into circles, whorls and ribbons, and arranged in multilayered compositions.
Torn Canvas, 70’s.
Reviewing an exhibition of Mr. Loving’s constructed pieces in The New York Times in 1974, Peter Schjeldahl wrote, “As dynamically composed reliefs – as ‘wall pieces’ – they energize the space around them, seemingly almost to be caught in the act of moving across the wall.”
Circa, 1974.
It was striking for an African-American of Mr. Loving’s generation to make his reputation in abstract art, a genre from which most black artists were discouraged. In the 1960’s and 70’s, when he entered the field, African-American artists were under great public pressure to depict the black experience in their work, pushing them toward figurative art.
Alvin Demar Loving Jr. was born in Detroit on Sept. 19, 1935. His father, Alvin Demar Loving Sr., was an educator and part-time sign painter who was later a dean at the University of Michigan School of Education. His mother, the former Mary Helen Greene, was a quilter, as was his grandmother. As a boy, Alvin used to sit at their feet as they sewed, watching their layered constructions take shape.
Cass Ave, 1998.
Mr. Loving earned a bachelor’s degree in fine arts from the University of Illinois in 1963 and a master’s in fine arts from the University of Michigan in 1965. He moved to New York City in 1968. From 1988 to 1996, he taught at City College in New York.
Mr. Loving’s first marriage, to the former Eleanor Jean Randles, ended in divorce. His second wife, the former Wyn Riser, died in 1990. Besides his wife, the former Mara Kearney, he is survived by a brother, Paul, of Detroit; a sister, Pamela Loving Copeland of Flint, Mich.; a son from his first marriage, Alvin Demar Loving III of Long Beach, Calif.; two daughters from his second marriage, Alicia Loving of Manhattan and Anne Loving Bethel of Eleuthera, the Bahamas; and eight grandchildren. A daughter from Mr. Loving’s first marriage, Lauri Loving Hurd, died in 2001.
Untitled, 1976-1979.
Mr. Loving’s work is in the permanent collections of the Whitney, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Studio Museum in Harlem, the Philadelphia Museum of Art and the Detroit Institute of Arts, among others.
His most recent commission, for the Metropolitan Transportation Authority, is on view at the Broadway-East New York subway station in Brooklyn. Completed in 2001, it comprises 70 brightly colored stained-glass windows and a large mosaic wall.