George Negroponte, Ancient Debt, 2026, Mixed-media on canvas, 7 x 9.5 in
Photo Credit: Gary Mamay
Negroponte Solo in Manhattan
"Everything I Know," a solo show of new work by George Negroponte, opens Thursday at the Anita Rogers Gallery in Lower Manhattan with a reception from 6 to 8 p.m. and will continue through Dec. 19.
Based in Springs, Negroponte has had a long career as an artist who has exhibited widely since graduating from Yale in 1975, a writer, and a curator who served on the board of SoHo's Drawing Center for 12 years and organized exhibitions there.
As someone who has written extensively about the work of other artists, he is entertainingly enlightened, if sometimes cryptic, about his own. Asked by the gallery to describe his work, he said, "Ouch. That's not easy. It's like explaining baseball to a Greek . . . a dizzying task. A relationship with a painting matures over time. . . . Making art should come with a sign: Danger Ahead."
He went on to cite Mark Rothko, Franz Kline, Willem de Kooning, Ad Reinhardt, and Ellsworth Kelly as "artists who carried the past with them. That mattered." As key to his recent work, he mentioned Hans Hofmann's "The Search for the Real." "I agree with him," wrote Negroponte. "Painting is not about the real. It is the real. It's a thing in itself, liberated from the outside world." The exhibition bears that out.