Larry Rivers, LARRY RIVERS (hand signed and inscribed first edition book), 1989

Larry Rivers

LARRY RIVERS (hand signed and inscribed first edition book), 1989

Hardback monograph with a dust jacket (hand signed and inscribed "Enjoy the Matisse"

Signed, dated and inscribed by Larry Rivers in red marker on the title page

11 3/5 × 9 4/5 inches

Lavishly illustrated hardback monograph with dust jacket on the occasion of the artist's career retrospective. Text is by the distinguished art historian and Princeton professor Sam Hunter.

Hand signed, dated and dedicated in red marker on the title page.
Inscription reads:

To Joanne and Ira
Enjoy the Matisse
Larry Rivers, April 2, 1992

About the book:
Hunter, Sam. LARRY RIVERS. 358 pp. with 400 illustrations, including 155 plates in color. Folio, cloth. New York, Rizzoli, 1989.
New York: Rizzoli, 1989. First edition. Hardcover. 358 pages. Retrospective monograph on Larry Rivers. Features text by Sam Hunter. Includes 400 illustrations of which 155 are in color.

Publisher's Blurb:

Rivers's public persona as an artist combines that of bohemian outsider, sensualist and entertainer. His best-known images of the 1960s--Dutch Masters cigars, French money, cigarette packs--became Pop icons. Eschewing abstraction, he came up with startling, disquieting figures, such as his obese, sagging mother-in-law depicted in the nude with brutal honesty ( Double Portrait of Berdie ). Yet there is more to Rivers than the hipster, as this lavishly illustrated monograph by a former Princeton art historian shows. Hunter makes a case for Rivers as a social realist: witness his powerful construction piece Ghetto Stoop or recent works that include searching portraits of Primo Levi, Leonard Bernstein and New York's ex-mayor Ed Koch. In History of Matzoh , a collage-like chronicle of the Jewish people, Rivers (born Yizroch Grossberg in 1923 in the Bronx) explores his Jewish roots. His latest series of 3-D paintings encompasses dancers, movie stars, Chinese and surrealist motifs.