ITHACA REGAINED

GREEK ARTISTS IN NEW YORK

George Negroponte

Courtesy of Jason McCoy Inc., New York

Negroponte was born in New York City in 1953. His father, a ship-owner, was a “Sunday painter,” and his mother worked in the Department of Prints and Drawings at the Metropolitan Museum. From an early age, Negroponte was surrounded by art, and as an undergraduate at Yale University he learned that “painting is not easy. It’s a way of living.” Reflecting on his career, he has said that he is not sure that one chooses to be an artist. It is rather the result of realizing that certain issues will not leave one alone.

Inspired by Rothko and Stamos, Negroponte has reinterpreted abstract painting for the modern era. It has been said that his paintings open like narratives and that their sensuous surfaces invite the viewer to reflect on their soft gradations of luminous hues.

Negroponte is a Visual Arts Lecturer at Princeton University and an instructor at Parsons School of Design and the New York Studio School. He is co-chairman of the Board of Directors of the Drawing Center in New York and has served as a panelist for ten years at the New York State Council of the Arts. His work is in the public collections of The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; The Museum of Modern Art in Andros; and the Vorres Museum of Contemporary Greek Art in Attica.