American painter, Harold Stevenson, Died at 89

  Artists

Harold Stevenson was born in 1929, in Idabel, Oklahoma and died on

He was an American painter.

He was known for his paintings of the male nude.

Harold Stevenson was a friend, a mentor, and an associate of Andy Warhol, and appeared in the Warhol film, Heat (credited as “Harold Childe”).

He went to the University of Oklahoma before moving to New York City in 1949.

Stevenson moved to Paris in 1952 and displayed at European exhibitions for the following 20 years.

Stevenson’s most notable works were painted during the 1960s, including his most popular works, Eye of Lightning Billy and The New Adam.

Eye of Lightning Billy was displayed at the Sidney Janis Gallery in 1962 as a major aspect of the “New Realists” show, which included works by Warhol (counting his 200 Campbell’s Soup Cans), Claes Oldenburg, Roy Lichtenstein, Robert Moskowitz, Robert Indiana, George Segal, Jim Dine, Peter Agostini, James Rosenquist, Wayne Thiebaud and Tom Wesselmann.

The Eye of Lightning Billy was obtained by the Museum of Modern Art in 2008.

In 1963, Stevenson’s monstrous painting, The New Adam, was shown at the Iris Clert Gallery in Paris. The wall painting is a 8-foot by 39-foot leaning back bare man.

The model was youthful on-screen character Sal Mineo, and the artwork was committed to Stevenson’s sweetheart at the time, Lord Timothy Willoughby de Eresby, the beneficiary to the Earl of Ancaster.

The work was considered for incorporation in the 1963 original Pop Art presentation “Six Painters and the Object” at the Guggenheim, however was viewed as too substantial, and that it would occupy from whatever remains of the works.

During 2005, the artwork was obtained by the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum.

In 1963, Stevenson made a 40-foot tall painting of the Spanish matador El Cordobes, which was dangled from the Eiffel Tower with the consent of the French government.

The subsequent road turned parking lot made the administration necessitate that the artwork be taken down.

In 1968, in Paris, he showed “The Great Society”, an accumulation of pictures of people from the place where he grew up. The accumulation is presently possessed by the Fred Jones Jr. Historical center of Art at the University of Oklahoma.

Having lived in New York, Paris, Key West and the Hamptons, Stevenson came back to the place where he grew up of Idabel.

He every now and again added to NIGHT magazine.

Harold Stevenson passed away at 89 years old.

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