Cleve Gray in 1962
In college at Princeton, Gray developed a lifelong fascination with Chinese and Japanese painting and philosophy, writing his thesis on Yuan Dynasty landscape painting. “The splashing of the ink around the brush comes by instinct, while the manipulation of the ink by the brush depends upon spiritual energy." - Cleve Gray
Cleve Gray graduated summa cum laude from Princeton University, where he studied painting and Far Eastern Art. Like many of his generation, he joined the United States Army during World War II, serving in England, France and Germany. After the war, he remained in Paris on the GI Bill, where he furthered his study of painting. During the 1960s he formed a close friendship with Barnett Newman. It was during this time that he experienced an artistic metamorphosis, dissolving his earlier cubist compositions in a sea of distilled color. This dramatic body of work marked the beginning of an artistic meditation that would last for over 40 years. The rigors of French modernism, the ethos of Abstract Expressionism and the calligraphic restraint of Eastern art commingle with astounding effect.
Gray was admired for his large-scale, vividly colorful and lyrically gestural abstract compositions and achieved his greatest critical recognition in the late 1960s' and 70s' after working for many years in a comparatively conservative late-Cubist style. Inspired in the 1960s' by artists like Jackson Pollock, Clyfford Still, Mark Rothko and Helen Frankenthaler, Gray began to produce large paintings using a variety of application methods - pouring, staining, sponging and other nontraditional techniques - to create compositions combining expanses of pure color and spontaneous calligraphic gestures.
In 1972 and 1973 Cleve Gray produced "Threnody," a suite of 14 paintings, each measuring 20 feet by 20 feet, dedicated to the dead on both sides of the Vietnam War. The series was commissioned by the Neuberger Museum of Art at Purchase College, part of the State University of New York, and is considered one of the largest groups of abstract paintings created for a specific public space. Gray's work is included in the collections of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Museum of Modern Art, the Whitney Museum of American Art and many other museums.
Public Collections
Addison Gallery of American Art, Phillips Academy, Andover, Massachusetts
Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo, New York
The Brooklyn Museum, New York
Cathedral of Saint John the Divine Art Gallery,New York
Colby College Museum of Art, Waterville, Maine
Columbia University Art Gallery, New York
Columbus Museum of Art, Ohio
The Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.
Grey Art Gallery and Study Center, New York University, New York
Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York
Heckscher Museum, Huntington, New York
Honolulu Academy of the Arts, Hawaii
The Jewish Museum, New York
Krannert Art Museum, University of Illinois, Champaign
Mattatuck Museum, Waterbury, Connecticut
The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York
Minnesota Museum of Art, St. Paul
Museum of Art, Rhode Island School of Design, Providence
Museum of Fine Arts, Boston
Museum of Fine Arts, Houston
The Museum of Modern Art, New York
National Museum of American Art, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C.
The Neuberger Museum, State University of New York at Purchase
New Britain Museum of American Art, Connecticut
The Newark Museum, New Jersey
Norton Gallery of Art, West Palm Beach, Florida
Oklahoma City Art Center, Oklahoma
The Phillips Collection, Washington, D.C.
The Art Museum, Princeton University, New Jersey
Rose Art Museum, Brandeis University, Waltham, Massachusetts
Shearson Lehman Hutton Collection, New York
Sheldon Memorial Art Gallery, University of Nebraska, Lincoln
Shite Museum of Art, University of Notre Dame, Indiana
Tennessee Botanical Gardens and Fine Arts Center, Nashville
Union Station, Hartford, Connecticut
Vanderbilt Art Gallery, Nashville, Tennessee
The Wadsworth Atheneum, Hartford, Connecticut
Whitney Museum of American Art, New York
Williams College Museum of Art, Williamstown, Massachusetts
Yale University Art Gallery, New Haven, Connecticut
Willard Gibbs Research Laboratory, Yale University, New Haven, Connecticut