Self-Portrait
Robert De Niro American
Not on view
The critic Clement Greenberg pronounced De Niro “an important young abstract painter” upon seeing his 1946 show at Peggy Guggenheim’s gallery, Art of This Century. A student of Hans Hofmann, he followed his master’s admonition to locate a figure in planes where lines are carried to the edge of the picture. However, very few paintings in this style remain; most were lost or destroyed by the artist. When De Niro saw this picture exhibited at The Metropolitan Museum of Art in 1981, he asked to exchange it with a recent one, hoping he might keep it from view. Fortunately, Mrs. Newman declined. Like Earl Kerkam, De Niro looked to French painters for inspiration at this period, especially Pierre Bonnard and Georges Rouault.
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