Roy Nydorf | Four Decades
Roy Nydorf | Four Decades April 19 – June 10, 2012
Green Hill Center for North Carolina Art
Welcome
From the artist
Green Hill Center for NC Art is proud to present the first major survey of the work of mid-career artist Roy Nydorf through the exhibition Roy Nydorf | Four Decades, curated by Edie Carpenter, Director, Curatorial & Artistic Programs. Promoting artistic excellence and advocating for NC artists are core principles and the guide by which Green Hill Center makes exhibition and programming decisions. A special niche that Green Hill Center serves is providing major exhibition opportunities to the mid-career artists such as Roy Nydorf, a working artist and full-time educator who has lived in North Carolina for over thirty years. Roy exemplifies what it means to be a teacher and artist and Four Decades provides deserved recognition for his work and contribution to the art world.
My profound thanks go to my wife, Terry Hammond, family, friends, teachers, and colleagues for their continuing support. I gratefully acknowledge a Faculty Research Grant from the Office of the Vice President and Academic Dean at Guilford College in support of this project. My thanks and gratitude go to Christopher Benfey for his sustained interest in my art, and his humor, intellect, and poetic sensibility.
Green Hill Center for NC Art promotes the visual arts of North Carolina; with over 7,000 square feet of exceptional gallery space, highly qualified artistic staff, and supportive artist community, the Center is one of the premier organizations to view and learn about the art and artists of our state. Hosting exhibitions such as Four Decades builds audiences for all the exceptional artists of North Carolina. This would not be possible without the support of donors, sponsors and grantors. We would like to acknowledge the North Carolina Arts Council and United Arts Council of Greater Greensboro for their ongoing support and guidance, along with VF Corporation for their support of our educational programming. A special thanks to Terry Hammond for her tireless work and to a generous board member who supported the printing and production of this catalogue. Green Hill Center is guided by a committed Board of Directors, led by Lisa Johnson, who has set us on an ambitious and bold path for the future.
I am indebted to Green Hill Center for NC Art for their sponsorship of this exhibition: in particular, Laura Way for her unwavering commitment; Edie Carpenter for her belief in my work, her curatorial vision, and patience; Mario Gallucci for his photographic and design prowess, and to the rest of the staff for organizing the programming and bringing the project to completion. I am especially thankful to my collectors and the lenders who have made key works available for this exhibition: Adair Armfield, Molly and Jeb Burns, Robin Carter, Fidelity Corporate Art Collection, John D. Gall, Linda Hiatt and Peter Reichard, Fred Lopp, Caroline Maness, Ann May, James C. Newlin, The Riedlinger Family, Linda and Tom Sloan, Virginia Vanstory, and The Weatherspoon Art Museum at The University of North Carolina at Greensboro. Roy Nydorf February 2012
I hope you enjoy this beautiful catalogue and the artwork of Roy Nydorf. Thank you. Laura Way Executive Director/CEO Green Hill Center for NC Art Roy Nydorf in his studio, 2012
curator’s introduction Roy Nydorf’s paintings, prints, drawings, and sculptures place the human figure at their center. This exhibition brings together over two hundred works which embody his project to elaborate an art that is “intimate, directly connected to human experience and capable of many layers of meaning and interpretation.”¹ One can see the evolution of this approach from the portrait series and figurative subjects (tobacco pickers, tree climbers, street scenes) of the eighties and nineties, to the carved wood sculptures and works on paper he is currently producing. The beginnings of Nydorf’s direct style and humanist perspective are apparent in the early paintings and prints of people from the gritty working class neighborhood near his New Haven studio he made shortly after graduating from the MFA program at Yale University. Three Men at a Bar (1976) and Two New Haven Youths (1976) show an eye for evoking personality through details of gesture and dress; and have spare, dramatically lit settings. The tutelage of Nydorf’s mentors Robert Marx and Gabor Peterdi is evident in his mastery of intaglio techniques in the delicate waft of smoke rising through the slanting light in the bar room scene. The use of chiaroscuro and depiction of one of the men backlit in shadow recalls Baroque compositions. This allusion to a historical style is characteristic of the passionate dialog Nydorf engages with his artistic sources, which include the Florentine Renaissance, European modernism, American folk art, as well as the sculptural traditions of West Africa, Oceania, and the Pacific Northwest. Nydorf has stated that he pays particular attention to the surfaces of his works which are often scumbled, inscribed, or built up with overlays. In portrait series such as Felicia, Heroic Heads and Picasso, the artist employs a tiered formal approach, combining watercolor and gouache over etching, or ink and watercolor over monotype to build up texture and luminous color. In Portrait of Robin Cochran (1984) in the collection of The Weatherspoon Art Museum, two drawing methods
are superimposed, the energetic lines of the ink drawing lending the subject’s charcoal likeness classical definition and psychological complexity. Nydorf’s multiple portrayals of Picasso, including a large etching completed earlier in the year, allude to contemporary art issues such as seriality, imitation, and the primacy of photographic representation. In Young Pablo (Distressed) (1997), loosely based on the 1896 photographic portrait of Picasso at fifteen, the soft contours in pastel of the adolescent’s face appear scratched with finely etched lines that punctuate the drawing’s surface. We perceive the figure through this tactile screen which functions like the incised gold leaf on icon paintings; rather than preserving the likeness of Picasso in time, it instead delivers it into the present. In this work Nydorf achieves what Hilton Kramer has suggested is one of the aims of contemporary figuration: “addressing the spectator on two levels simultaneously, the mythic/symbolic and the naturalistic.”² The intersection of the world of the senses and the world of myth is further developed in the large allegorical drawings of bathers at public baths and lakes in central Italy, which the artist first began in the nineties. The idyllic settings offer a perfect context for expressing the imaginative absorption and heightened sensibility explored in his depictions of acrobats and people gathered around bonfires. The five principle figures in Bathers (with Motorcyclists) (2003) are associated with the surrounding landscape yet their relationship to each other is undetermined. The composition sets up pairings such as the two black motorcycles on the far shore and two black birds in the foreground foliage; and the outlines of the far mountain peaks which frame each of the foreground figures. Odd formal relationships become apparent in vignettes such as a nude man in the reeds with his shirt enveloping his arms and head, appearing to have sprung from a Boschian paradise as a young blonde woman emerges from the lake like a modern-day Venus. The central figure of a standing boy, whose Mediterranean features recall those of Boy with a Horse (1998), stares resolutely out at the viewer. His stance and athletic build, described by light-touched
volumes, evoke a young Greek kouros. The boy’s outward regard and pose contrasts with the introspective countenance of a dark-haired woman seated at his left. Her voluptuous body is half covered by a leaf-patterned towel and an ornamental snake is entwined around her ankle. This melding of the natural and the aesthetic realms contributes to a growing sense of the enigmatic in this work. In Rapolano Terme (2010), set in a Roman bath, Nydorf orchestrates a similar transmutation of art and life through formal associations between the ancient architecture and the bathers in the touristic watering place. A conspicuous figure in the foreground with curly hair, upheld hands and open mouth resembles the grotesque carved heads of a central marble fountain. A man seen from the back, floating with hands raised in the swirling water, bears a strong resemblance to the artist. He surveys the scene before him from the bottom edge of the picture plane where his perspective approaches that of the viewer. The warm-toned Tuscan landscape visible in interstices in the arcade framed by archways resembles several landscape paintings in the exhibition, suggesting that the scene may be read as an allegory of Nydorf’s own artistic endeavor into which he invites us to enter. The four-color woodcut Swimmer with Fish (2007) highlights Nydorf’s use of fluid sinuous line in the portrayal of a submerged girl surrounded by the moving forms of fish. The harmonious contours and flowing wavy hair of the floating girl is an ideal type found in many of Nydorf’s female figures. She resembles Tree Climber (Blonde) (1990) as well as the young bikini-clad woman at the fountain in Rapolano Terme. Though her eyes are closed the swimmer is not passive, swimming with one arm raised, bathed in a golden light that also falls on a branch of coral at her feet. Like Rapolano Terme, the print suggests a parable for aesthetic experience in its image of a dreamlike immersion in nature evoking Surrealist accounts of access to the unconscious sources of art.
Sculpture is the medium which has allowed Nydorf the freest rein to delve into “non-verbal realms beyond temporal reality”³ and expand the expressive possibilities of the figure. In this he follows other artists, Gauguin, Kirchner and Picasso among the most famous, who have looked to non-Western art forms for a means of lending the world of the mind definition and substance. Nydorf was introduced to tribal art through his father’s collection of African sculpture and pursued an interest working with wood as an undergraduate with Wendell Castle. The carved wooden sculpture he has produced in parallel to his two-dimensional works displays tactile affinities between sculpting and printmaking, through forms that are often incised with painted designs or accentuate natural patterns in the wood. The selection on view in the exhibition includes a fantastical figure wrought from a single tree, elaborately decorated polychrome canes, and wall reliefs incorporating found objects. Over the past forty years Roy Nydorf has continued to explore questions of presence in his figurative subjects as well as in as his landscapes and still lifes. The diverse works in this mid-career retrospective are united in being intensely there – in terms of material resolution and ability to elicit meaning. This survey and catalogue documents the scope of Nydorf’s remarkable achievement and ongoing dedication to creating works with the power to engage his public directly. Edie Carpenter Director, Curatorial & Artistic Programs Green Hill Center for NC Art
¹Roy Nydorf, catalog to “Roy Nydorf, Etchings and Drawings 1972-1992, March 15-26, 1993,” Armstrong/Slater Gallery, Hampton University, Hampton, Virginia. ²Hilton Kramer, The Revenge of the Philistines, Art and Culture, 1972-1984, “Malcolm Morley,” p. 380. ³Roy Nydorf, artist statement, February 2012.
Self Portrait with Clay Ram,1975 etching, 11.75 x 17.5 inches
A FRESH PAIR OF EYES A fresh pair of eyes is what I need when I pull up at Roy Nydorf’s place for one of our jaunts. We might go out to look at Indian sites along a creek bed. Or Roy might lead me into the Guilford woods, where Levi Coffin hid escaped slaves, to show me one of the biggest poplar trees in North Carolina. Or this might be the day to explore the Cherokee towns in the Smoky Mountains, where Roy knows a lot of artists. That’s the thing. Roy knows stuff. Nothing is lost on him. I pick him up as I always do at his amazing farmhouse in the old tobacco town of Oak Ridge, outside Greensboro, when the early morning fog is lifting from the red clay. Roy’s house always shakes me awake. It’s not just what’s on the walls that strikes the visitor: eerie Cherokee and African masks carved by the finest makers; Roy’s wonderful big butterflies, like the radiantly blue Kyoto, their pastel texture perfectly matching the powdery feel of butterflies’ wings; arrowheads and serpentine twigs picked up on Roy’s meanders in the surrounding fields and woods. What you realize as you step out the door is that the whole landscape around the house, every tree and fence and gully, has undergone some shift under Roy’s attentive eye and hand. Here is a dangling apple branch tethered by a thread to a stump nearby—for fruit-bearing purposes, Roy murmurs, and aesthetic, too. And here’s a mummified possum inside the old cabin, filled like a Gothic museum with other treasures: rusted farm tools, the remains of a barred owl, twisted shafts of wood that might have snakes lurking inside. We always linger in Roy’s studio back in the house. There to greet me is my old friend Man with Bottle, a seamless assemblage of found and carved materials, the green vest painted so that the gold of the pants shows through around the buttons and pockets. I admire the pedestal rescued perhaps from a pawnshop. Oh, and the wonderful red-soled, Red Grooms shoes that anchor him at attention.
As always on such visits, Roy has some new things to show me, new things with the patina of age and mystery. Today it’s a sculpture that he has been carving. Who exactly is this Deer/Woman and where did she come from? Out of the wood from which she strayed is one answer, like Michelangelo’s slaves imprisoned in marble. She lay concealed in her branch of red cedar until Roy Nydorf came, like a fairy-tale prince, to rescue her. In the old Greek myths, women became laurel bushes to evade the predatory gods. Those antlers turning into hair or hair becoming antlers: you can’t see them both at the same time. Look at the hands pinned to her sides. She might be a diver, too, primed to plummet downward into some land of legend and dream. One can imagine the Old Philosopher, pried loose from a small fragment of bone, as a guide to that shadowy realm. He is old in every way conceivable. But he’s not a memento mori at all, grimly reminding us of time’s lapse and death hurtling toward us. No, Roy Nydorf has given this bit of bone, smaller than six inches by three, new life, as O’Keeffe resurrected her skulls and the pelvic bones of cows. I can’t get enough of this sharp-eyed old philosopher, his head tilted quizzically as though to say, “Yes, I have the answers, but it’s not time yet for me to divulge them to you.” There’s something indigenous about Roy’s work, as though it sprang full-blown from the Carolina clay. His love of Hispanic artists—Rivera and Kahlo, Picasso, and Ana Mendiata—enters into this primal feel for the land. He’s from the Northeast, of course, and paid his dues among the best artists of his generation at Yale, but you feel that he put down deep roots in the gently undulating Oak Ridge fields, which sometimes resemble—and you can see it in Roy’s paintings—the stark hills of Tuscany or Umbria, where he has trained his eyes and hands over the years. The Tobacco Pickers has a special intensity of the world as found. Broadleaf
compete with the old masters, in this case, Rembrandt, on their own terms, adopting the least forgiving materials and practices— etching, silverpoint, carved bone, watercolor—and emerging triumphant. But this is also a portrait of the artist as finder, a poet of things: the wristwatch, as potent a memento mori as an hourglass; the mysterious clay ram, who takes over the middle space, like a theatrical stage; the artist’s stylus, inscribing the image we see before us. And before I leave, I can’t get enough of that Striped Cat (Emma), so attentive, so locked-in on the found world with that yellow eye and those exploratory ears, nose, and tail. (We see her again, or a cousin of hers, in the beguiling, Balthus-like painting Coaxing the Bird, all radiant reds and jarring oranges.) Everything about Emma seems to say, “I see it!” But she herself is the thing we most want to see. Each hair, each last whisker, eyed by the sharp-eyed artist, and executed with his unerring hand.
Striped Cat (Emma), 2005
Christopher Benfey
three-plate color etching with à la poupeé, plate: 18 x 24 inches
tobacco is the subject here. The men culling leaves (just as my Tar Heel grandfather did as a boy) fit themselves into the interstices of the plants, as though they are extensions of the leaves or maybe shadows. I love the lightness and speed of the right-hand picker, pulling a shoot in stride and adding it to his abundant armload. I think he might be a stand-in for the artist, gathering his rich harvest from the visual world around him. The very fine Self-Portrait with Clay Ram takes us to the source of Roy’s art. On show here is Roy’s technical wizardry. He’s willing to
Christopher Benfey is Mellon Professor of English at Mount Holyoke College. He has published four highly regarded books on the American Gilded Age including “A Summer of Hummingbirds,” which won the 2009 Christian Gauss Award of Phi Beta Kappa. His most recent book is “Red Brick, Black Mountain, White Clay,” a family memoir set mostly in North Carolina.
Two New Haven Youths,1976 oil on canvas, 24 x 30 inches Collection of James C. Newlin
Three Men at a Bar, 1976 intaglio, 14 x 15 inches
Seated Man (Green Background), 1977 oil on canvas, 48 x 48 inches
Coaxing the Bird, 1979 oil on canvas, 65.5 x 84.5 inches
Street in Soho, 1981 oil on canvas, 84 x 63.5 inches
Street Scene with Priest, 1982 oil on canvas, 32 x 42 inches
The Tobacco Pickers, 1985 oil on canvas, 29 x 44 inches
Bonfire Party with Homer, 1990 oil on canvas, 76 x 58 inches
Tree Climber (Blonde), 1990 oil on canvas, 84 x 47.5 inches
Boy with a Horse, 1998 lithograph, 22.5 x 30 inches
Bathers Disrobing, 2003 watercolor, gouache, charcoal, 22.5 x 30 inches
Bathers (with Motorcyclists), 2003 contĂŠ, ink, gouache, graphite, 22.5 x 30 inches
Rapolano Terme, 2010 contĂŠ, gouache, watercolor, and ink on Magnani indigo paper, 9 x 13 inches
Swimmer with Fish, 2007 color woodcut, 16.5 x 12.5 inches
Kyoto, 2006 pastel, 22.5 x 30 inches Collection of Ann May
Grey Kitty, 2005 two-plate color etching with Ă la poupĂŠe color, plate: 18 x 24 inches
Portrait (Charleston, 1862), 1996 ink and watercolor over monotype, 30 x 22.5 inches
Young Pablo (Distressed), 1997 ink and pastel, 30 x 22.5 inches
Felicia: High Hair (in Pink), 1995
Felicia: Rome, Libya, Egypt, Africa, 1995
watercolor and gouache over etching, 15 x 11 inches
watercolor and gouache over etching, 15 x 11 inches
Man with Bottle, 2007 wood (Western Cedar), paint, found object, 31 x 5 x 2.5 inches
Motherhood (front and back view), 2000 wood (Catalpa), 16 x 4.5 x 5 inches
Offering, 2000 wood (Teak), 11.25 x 2 x 2 inches
Deer/Woman (detail), 2011 wood (Red Cedar), 34.5 x 1.75 x 7 inches
Old Philosopher, 2011 bone, pigment, 5.75 x 2.75 x 1 inches
Secrets, 2012 wood (Spalted Maple), 18 x 19.5 x 9.5 inches
Chronology 1952 Roy Herman Nydorf is born October 1 to artist parents Seymour and Elsie (nee Rosenberg) Nydorf in Roslyn, New York. The family, including his elder siblings, Amy and Ethan, live on Long Island in the town of Port Washington.
includes RHN’s etching, Let’s Boogie, which is shown in Faculty Exhibition. Yale University awards RHN a teaching assistantship to Gabor Peterdi.
1969 RHN attends life drawing class with Nathan Cabot Hale at the Art Students League in New York City. 1970 RHN attends State University of New York (SUNY) College at Brockport. 1972 RHN attends SUNY - Albany and studies with Thom O’Connor, Richard Stankiewicz and Israel Hershberg. 1973 RHN returns to SUNY-Brockport and studies printmaking with Robert Marx and sculpture with Wendell Castle. 1974 Earns B.A., SUNY College at Brockport. Yale University School of Art accepts RHN to M.F.A. program; he begins studies with Gabor Peterdi, William Bailey, Lester Johnson, Bernard Chaet, and Egbert Haverkamp Begemann. Chuck Close, Alex Katz, Jack Youngerman, Fairfield Porter and Robert Birmelin visit his studio. Mushinsha Press publishes The Widow’s Taboo, poetry by Al Poulin, Jr. and illustrations by RHN.
l-r, Gabor Peterdi, RHN and his mother, Elsie.
Rutgers National Works on Paper, (reproduction in catalog) Stedman Art Gallery, Rutgers University, Camden, NJ.
Receives mural commission from Garry Trudeau, author of comic strip, Doonesbury, New Haven, CT.
1982 Prints USA, (RHN’s aquatint, Man’s Image in Black, reproduced in catalog, Print Review 15) Pratt Graphics Center, New York, NY.
1978 Solo exhibition, Roy Nydorf: Paintings, Prints, Drawings, Paul Mellon Arts Center, Wallingford, CT.
Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden (Washington, DC) acquires Bearded Youth (drypoint); Portrait of Theresa (drypoint); and Sibyl (etching).
RHN moves to North Carolina to accept a tenure-track position at Guilford College, teaching painting, printmaking, drawing and art history at the rank of assistant professor.
Honorable Mention, Audubon Artists Annual Exhibition, National Academy of Design, New York, NY.
Solo exhibition, Roy Nydorf: Paintings, Drawings, and Prints, Founders Gallery, Guilford College, NC.
Two Generations, Brentano’s Gallery, Manhasset, NY.
1979 Solo exhibition, Print Room, Temple University, Philadelphia, PA.
1976 Earns M.F.A. with Honors, Yale University School of Art, New Haven, CT. Master Printer for Lester Johnson and John Walker.
41st Annual North Carolina Artists Exhibition, North Carolina Museum of Art, Raleigh, NC. The juror awards RHN’s painting, Seated Man, Green Background, a Purchase Award for “NC Art Center.”
Solo exhibition, Roy Nydorf: Paintings and Prints, Art and Architecture Building, Yale University School of Art, New Haven, CT.
1980 Solo exhibition, Roy Nydorf: Paintings, Warren Wilson College, Swannanoa, NC.
Allied Artists of America 63rd Annual Exhibition, National Academy of Design, New York, NY.
Solo exhibition, Roy Nydorf: Paintings, Prints, Drawings, Theatre Art Galleries, High Point, NC.
2nd Prize, Goddard College Annual Painting Exhibition, Plainfield, VT.
Solo exhibition, Perceptions, Mona Berman Gallery, New Haven, CT. Selected Works from the Watercolor Society of North Carolina, North Carolina Museum of Art, Raleigh, NC.
1st Prize, 7th Annual Print Competition, Port Washington NY Art Council.
RHN leads Guilford College Study Abroad program in London, England.
1st Prize, Huntington Art League Annual, Heckscher Museum, Huntington, NY.
1981 Five Printmakers, Invitational exhibition at Fontbonne College, St. Louis, MO.
1975 Receives Schickle-Collingwood Prize for Outstanding First-Year Student, Yale University, School of Art. Yale Summer School of Art (Norfolk, CT) awards RHN teaching assistantship. The program’s limited edition print portfolio
1977 Instructor of Design, University of New Haven, CT.
RHN in his New Haven studio, circa 1977.
RHN exhibits six oil paintings (The Bathers, Street Scene with Priest, Suspicion, Baguettes, Crowded Street, and, Street in Soho) in The Human Figure, an invitational exhibition at the Green Hill Center for NC Art, Greensboro, NC.
Portrait of Theresa, drypoint The National Museum of American Art Smithsonian Institution (Washington, DC) acquires Isolated Mullah (etching & aquatint). 1983 What is Real? Green Hill Center for NC Art, Greensboro, NC. Juror Nathan Olivera (Artist, Stanford University) selects RHN’s color etching, Man’s Image in Black for Purchase Award, 6th Hawaii National Print Competition, Honolulu Academy of Arts, Honolulu, HI. RHN begins first of four 3-year terms as Chair of Guilford College Art Department. 1984 Guilford College grants tenure to RHN. May 12, RHN and Theresa Nadine Hammond (TNH) marry at their home in Oak Ridge, NC. Southern Graphics Council Members Traveling Exhibition, Spirit Square Arts Center, Charlotte, NC (Travels to MD, SC, GA) [Juror: Janet
The Unnatural Landscape, Fay Gold Gallery, Atlanta, GA.
Saints and Religious Heroes, Weatherspoon Art Gallery, UNC-Greensboro, NC.
1985 2nd Regional Juried Art Exhibition, Arts Council, Spartanburg, SC (Juror: Lowry Sims, Curator, Metropolitan Museum of Art, NY).
Art and Music, Green Hill Center for NC Art, Greensboro, NC. Demonstrates monotype printmaking at the Southern Graphics Conference, Kansas City Art Institute, Kansas City, MO.
1986 Guilford College promotes RHN to Associate Professor.
Two Painter/Printmakers, Hastings College Art Gallery, Hastings, NE. Juror’s Award, Southern Graphics Council Members Traveling Exhibition, Atlanta College of Art, Atlanta, GA (Juror: Carol Summers, Artist, Los Angeles, CA). The Printed Image: More Than Meets the Eye, Green Hill Center for NC Art, Greensboro, NC. Figurative Painters from the Southeast, University of Hawai’i at Hilo, HI.
Valdottavo, Italia, softground etching 1989 RHN is Artist-in-Residence at Graphics Workshop, Santa Fe, NM. Solo exhibition, Roy Nydorf, Progression of Visual Thought: A Series of Cherries, Raleigh Contemporary Galleries, Raleigh, NC. The Printmaker’s Choice: Works of Eight Premier American Printmakers, Leeds Art Gallery, Earlham College, Richmond, IN.
1992 RHN & TNH travel to Italy. Pacific States Biennial National Print Exhibition, University of Hawaii at Hilo, HI. The Body... As Symbol, As Subject, Being Served, in Art, Milwaukee Institute of Art and Design, Milwaukee, WI. Roy Nydorf: New Paintings, Catalog, essay by Thomas W. Jones, Executive Director, Danville Museum of Fine Arts and History, Danville, VA. 1993 Spends summer in Tuscany. Roy Nydorf: Corroded Myths, Peninsula Fine Arts Center, Newport News, VA.
1987 RHN’s biography first included in Who’s Who in American Art. Fay Gold Gallery (Atlanta, GA) begins representing RHN.
Roy Nydorf: Etchings and Drawings 19721992, (exhibition and artist residency), Hampton University, Hampton, VA.
The Peterdi Years, Yale University School of Art, New Haven, CT (Portfolio in collection of Yale University Art Gallery).
Roy Nydorf: Etchings and Drawings, Brochure, essay by Lee Brady, Associate Professor, Hampton University, Hampton, VA.
Clemson National Print and Drawing Exhibition, Clemson University, SC (Juror: Terrance LaNoue, Arist, New York, NY).
Roy Nydorf: Paintings on Metal and Wood, (exhibition and artist residency), Abington Friends School, Jenkintown, PA.
Neo-Expressionism, SECCA, Winston Salem, NC. Drawing Redefined, Green Hill Center for NC Art, Greensboro, NC. 1988 Awarded Kenan Faculty Development Grant to attend printmaking workshop at Studio Camnitzer in Valdottavo (Lucca), Italy. Solo exhibition, Roy Nydorf: Sketches From Italy,” Jennifer Moore Gallery, Greensboro, NC. Landscape/Cityscape, Franz Bader Gallery, Washington, DC.
Center for NC Art, Greensboro, NC.
Tributaries, Leedy-Voulkos Art Center, Alternative Space, Kansas City, MO.
The Weatherspoon Art Gallery selects RHN’s drawing, Portrait of Robin Cochran, for the Art on Paper exhibition, and purchases it for the Dillard Collection.
RHN & TNH travel to Italy.
Large Paintings, Raleigh Contemporary Galleries, Raleigh, NC.
Photo Credit: Vance Arnold
Flint, Curator of Prints, National Museum of American Art, Washington, DC].
Morning Coffee, Pinks and Greys, monotype 1990 RHN is Artist-in-Residence at Graphics Workshop, Santa Fe, NM. 1991 Roy Nydorf: Live Drawings and Prints (with Michael Northuis), Green Hill Center for NC Art, Greensboro, NC. Bradley National 23rd Print and Drawing Exhibition, (Honorable Mention, reproduction in catalog) Bradley University, Peoria, IL.
Roy Nydorf: Works on Paper, Casa Santa Lucia, Monti-in-Chianti, Italy. 1994 RHN receives commission to create a drawing for the Robert Donaldson Award, NC Governor’s Business Council on the Arts and Humanities. RHN leads Guilford College semester abroad in Dorf Tirol, Italy. Drawings, Brunnenburg Castle, Dorf Tirol, Italy. Roy Nydorf: Italian Notebooks, Green Hill
Dr. Siegfried de Rachewiltz & RHN in the vineyard at Brunnenburg Castle, Italy. 1995 RHN attends Southeastern College Art Conference (SECAC), Richmond, VA, and presents panel titled, “Fantasy, Horror, and Surrealism – Is it a Southern Thing?” Contemporary Symbolism, 450 Broadway Gallery, New York, NY. PAGE 22, 450 Broadway Gallery, New York, NY. Prints: An Invitational of American Artists, Ball State University Museum of Art, Muncie, IN. The Print and the Paper, San Diego Art Institute, San Diego, CA. 1996 RHN & TNH travel to France & Spain. Guilford College promotes RHN to Full Professor. Nine North Carolina Printmakers, Green Hill Center for NC Art, Greensboro, NC. Irene Leache Memorial Exhibition, Chrysler Museum of Art, Norfolk, VA. Delta National Small Prints Exhibition, Arkansas State University, (Purchase Award, reproductions in catalog). 1997 Artist-in-Residence at Ball State University, Muncie, IN. About Memory: A Selection of Twentieth Century Portraits, Ball State University Museum of Art, Muncie, IN. 21st Harper College National Print and
Drawing Exhibition, (Purchase Award) (Catalog) Palatine, IL. The New Realism, Center of the Earth Gallery, Charlotte, NC. 1998 RHN & TNH travel to Italy.
Commissioned to design compact disc cover, “HUNGRY!” for international blues recording artist, Eric “Two Scoops” Moore. There but for the Grace of …Temporary Shelters, curated by Bernice Steinbaum, Here Here Gallery, Cleveland, OH. 2001 Artist-in-Residence at Artveneto, Feltre, Italy. Paints the Dolomites. Lean on Me, 8th Annual Woodworking Competition & Exhibition, The Wharton Esherick Museum, Paoli, PA. Monothon, SITE Santa Fe, Santa Fe, NM. 2002 RHN authors, “Gabor Peterdi (1915-2001) Reflections” for the Southern Graphics Council fall newsletter.
RHN and his father painting near Lucca, Italy. Artist-in-Residence at University of Massachusetts, Amherst. Creates Boy with a Horse lithograph. Solo exhibition, Roy Nydorf: Paintings and Works on Paper, Theatre Art Galleries, High Point, NC. Art Text, (Best in Show Award), AAWS, Sawtooth Center for Visual Design, WinstonSalem, NC. Pablo Picasso: Homage to a Modern Icon, Fraser Gallery, Washington, DC. The Red Clay Survey: Biennial Exhibition of Contemporary Southern Art, (Merit Award), Huntsville Museum of Art, Huntsville, AL. 1999 Roy Nydorf: Painted Realms, Christel DeHaan Fine Arts Center, University of Indianapolis, IN.
Prints USA 2005, Springfield Art Museum, Springfield, MO. Solo exhibition, Roy Nydorf, Gallery 55, Natick, MA. 2006 Museum of Texas Tech University acquires RHN’s color etching, Man’s Image in Black/ Red, for the Color Print USA Collection. International Group Exhibit, curated by Zheng Xuewu, Tsingzhou Museum, Beijing, China. Elements, Green Hill Center for NC Art, Greensboro, NC.
Solo exhibition, The Lure of Italy, Hawthorne Gallery, Winston-Salem, NC.
2007 RHN & TNH travel to Italy.
The Print Fantastic, Theatre Art Galleries, High Point, NC. Curated by John Gall. 2010 RHN leads Guilford College’s study abroad program in Siena, Italy. Art on Paper, Weatherspoon Art Museum, Greensboro, NC. 2011 RHN is Artist-in-Residence at University of Hawai’i-Hilo.
Then & Now, Harper College, Palatine, IL. Roy Nydorf & Turner McGehee, Haydon Gallery, Nebraska Art Association, Lincoln, NE.
2004 Travels with TNH to Oaxaca and Mexico City, Mexico. Art on Paper, Weatherspoon Art Museum, Greensboro, NC, (reproduced in catalog). 2005 Travels, under a Freeman Foundation Grant to Guilford College, for three weeks in Japan.
RHN serves as juror for the 19th Annual DeLand Fall Festival of the Arts, DeLand, FL. RHN in Pieve Sprenna, Italy. Solo exhibition, Roy Nydorf: Drawings & Prints, Gallery 55, Natick, MA. Who’s Who in America includes RHN. 2008 Artist-in-Residence at Western Carolina University, Cullowhee, NC. RHN teaches printmaking at the University of Georgia’s Cortona, Italy, Study Abroad Program.
Just Racin’: Art on Wheels, (catalog), Green Hill Center for NC Art, Greensboro, NC, (traveling exhibition).
Giovanili Pulsioni, Fortezza Medicea, Cortona, Italy.
The Faculty Selects: Alumni Invitational IV, Tower Fine Arts Gallery, (catalog), SUNY Brockport, Brockport, NY.
Mostra: Opere di studenti ed artisti dell’ Università della Georgia, Palazzo Vagnotti, Cortona, Italy.
2000 Receives Kenan Faculty Development Grant to study Northwest Coast Native American Carving. Travels to Seattle, WA, and Vancouver, BC.
PRINTED: Contemporary Prints & Books by North Carolina Artists, Green Hill Center for NC Art, Greensboro, NC. Curated by Bill Fick. RHN admiring geishas in Kyoto, Japan.
RHN’s monotype, Heroic Head (Spontaneous Combustion), is published in Printmaking: The Complete Guide to Processes and Techniques, by Bill Fick and Beth Grabowski, (Laurence King Publishing). RHN’s woodcut print, Japanese Cranes, selected for display in the Art in Embassies Program, U.S. Embassy Residence in Kampala, Uganda.
Celebrating the Legacy of Romare Bearden, Mint Museum of Art, Spirit Square Art Center, Charlotte, NC.
Sculpture by Roy Nydorf, The Cemala Foundation Art Gallery at Triad Stage, Greensboro, NC.
Clark at Arrowmont School of Crafts, TN.
2009 RHN takes wood sculpting class with Hunt
2011 Contemporary Invitational Intaglio/ Lithographic Print and Drawing Exhibition, University of Hawai’i, Hilo, HI. The Dream, the Vision, the Reality: Celebrating Two Decades of the African American Atelier, African American Atelier, Greensboro, NC. 2012 Roy Nydorf | Four Decades, Green Hill Center for NC Art, Greensboro, NC. 20/20 Vision, Fifth Edition - The Art of Contemporary Printmaking,” The Fire House Gallery, Louisville, GA. Clementine, Cortona, handcolored etching
About Green Hill Center The mission of Green Hill Center for NC Art is to promote the visual arts of North Carolina by engaging a broad community of artists, adults and children through dynamic exhibitions and educational programs and providing a platform for exploration and investment in art. Established in 1974, Green Hill Center for NC Art is a non-profit organization devoted to North Carolina’s visual arts, artists, and cultural life. Core to Green Hill Center’s mission is to exhibit the work of NC artists living and working in the state. Two general principles guide the development of exhibitions: providing a comprehensive overview of the visual art produced by NC artists and presenting the best examples in accordance with high aesthetic and formal quality. Green Hill Center’s exhibitions are designed to allow artists exhibition opportunities at every stage in their careers. Education has been at the forefront of Green Hill Center’s mission since its inception and has a strong reputation in the state as a leader in demonstrating the power of the arts as an educational tool. One of the first and longest running educational programs established in 1980 is Artists-in-the-Schools, supported by Guilford County Schools. In 1996 Green Hill Center opened ArtQuest, North Carolina’s first interactive art studio for children. Its exhibits, designed by North Carolina artists and educators, provide a safe, stimulating setting for families and children to explore the artistic process in an innovative studio.
Board of Directors 2011-2012
List of Staff
Lisa Johnson President
Executive Director & CEO
Edie Carpenter
Director, Curatorial & Artistic Programs
Bill Crowder President-Elect
Mary Young
Director, Education & Community Partnerships
Karen Kahn Treasurer
Jaymie Meyer
Marianne Bennett Secretary
Verna Fricke
Doug Stone Past President
Mario Gallucci
Lisa Anderson Adair Armfield John Beerman Brigitte Blanton Louise Brady Roymieco Carter Rod Cooper Alex Elkan Lindsay Jones Barbara Kretzer Betsy Lane Lorne Lassiter
Director, Youth & Outreach Programs, ArtQuest Program Coordinator & Educator, ArtQuest Program Assistant & Graphic Design
Dabney Sanders Kay Smith Kimberly Strong Adam Tarleton Art Winstead
Front cover: Striped Cat (Emma), 2005, three-plate color etching with à la poupeé, plate: 18 x 24 inches (image reversed)
Published in conjunction with the exhibition Roy Nydorf | Four Decades April 19 – June 10, 2012 Green Hill Center for NC Art © 2012 Green Hill Center for NC Art 200 N. Davie Street, Box No. 4 Greensboro, NC 27401
www.greenhillcenter.org
Laura Way
Art © Roy Nydorf Catalog Artwork Photography: Timothy Barkley - all but Bathers Disrobing, Portrait (Charleston, 1862), and Young Picasso (Distressed).
Catalog Design: Mario Gallucci • Catalog printing: Clinton Press Other Photography: Mario Gallucci - Nydorf Studio Portrait, Bathers Disrobing, Portrait (Charleston, 1862), and Young Picasso (Distressed).
Chronology Photographs: Courtesy of the Artist All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photographs, recording, or any information or retrieval system without permission in writing from the publisher.
Emily Shank
Shop Manager & Curatorial Assistant
Courtney Whittington
Development & Membership Associate
Liz Busch
Communications Manager
Nancy Wallace
Administrative Assistant
Sol Pegram
Accounts Manager
Molly Blanchard
Visitor Services Coordinator
Delois Bynum Front Desk
Joy Waegerle
Jack Stratton
Alice Drake
Josue Roman
Rebecca Fagg
Nicole Schindler
ArtQuest ArtQuest
Lighting Specialist
Preparator/Installer Volunteer
Volunteer