Installation view of Richard Mayhew: Natural Order at Venus Over Manhattan, New York, 2023.
Richard Mayhew in his studio. Photo: Jason Henry.
A Centenary
Richard Mayhew
100 Years
Venus Over Manhattan celebrates the 100th birthday of Richard Mayhew, an artist whose profound and emotional connection to the America art has captivated audiences for decades.
Richard Mayhew at his home studio in Soquel, California
The New York Times
At 99, the Painter Richard Mayhew Is Still Upending Expectations
by Jonathan Griffin
The painter Richard Mayhew, who recently celebrated his 99th birthday, has lived through as broad a swath of this nation’s history as anyone you might hope to meet. Sitting at a patio table outside his cedar-shingled suburban home in Soquel, near Santa Cruz, Mayhew leaned back in his chair and reflected on his long life. “I drove across the United States six times,” he said. “Three over, and three back, from New York to San Francisco. I was always looking.”
Richard Mayhew. Photo: Jason Henry for the New York Times
Richard Mayhew was born in 1924 in Massapequa, New York. He studied at the Brooklyn Museum Art School, the Art Students League of New York, and Columbia University.
Mayhew’s work has been the subject of numerous major solo exhibitions, including recent exhibitions at Venus Over Manhattan, New York; San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; Sonoma Valley Museum of Art, Sonoma; South Etna Montauk Foundation, Montauk; the Heckscher Museum of Art, Huntington; the Museum of the African Diaspora (MoAD), San Francisco; and the Telfair Museum of Art, Savannah. In 1972, The Store Front Museum—founded by Tom Lloyd, an artist and founding member of The Studio Museum in Harlem—organized a solo exhibition of his work in collaboration with the Metropolitan Museum of Art. In 1978, The Studio Museum in Harlem mounted a retrospective exhibition of his work “Richard Mayhew: An American Abstractionist,” curated by Dr. Mary Schmidt Campbell.
Mayhew’s work frequently features in major institutional exhibitions, including recent presentations at the National Academy of Design, New York; Brooklyn Museum, Brooklyn; Wadsworth Atheneum, Hartford; Hudson River Museum, Yonkers, NY; Columbus Museum, Columbus; Detroit Institute of Arts, Detroit; Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington, D.C.; The Broad, Los Angeles; Fine Arts Museum of San Francisco, de Young Museum, San Francisco; and the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston.
His work is held in the permanent collections of over ninety public institutions, including the Art Institute of Chicago; Detroit Institute of Arts, Detroit; High Museum of Art, Atlanta; Los Angeles County Museum of Art; Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.; Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington, D.C.; San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, San Francisco; The Studio Museum in Harlem, New York; and the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York.
Richard Mayhew retired from the Pennsylvania State University as Professor Emeritus in 1991, having previously taught at numerous institutions including Hunter College, Smith College, the Art Students League of New York, Pratt Institute, and the Brooklyn Museum Art School. He is among the youngest members ever elected to the National Academy of Design, and is the recipient of numerous awards, fellowships, and residencies.
Richard Mayhew lived and worked in Soquel, California, until his death in 2024.
The watercolor landscapes of Richard Mayhew are full of experiment. They are also full of emotion, his passion for the land long promised to Native Americans and freed slaves.
Artforum has named Venus Over Manhattan’s upcoming exhibition Richard Mayhew: Watercolor a “Must See.”
He drew from his Black and Native American heritage, as well as his own memory, to find an emotional resonance behind the beauty of nature.
“Art is involved with the uniqueness of special sensibility, which makes a difference not only to a viewer, but to the whole nation.”—Richard Mayhew
What color is grief? We are deeply saddened by the loss of Richard Mayhew, a visionary artist and close friend of the museum
Mayhew examined place, identity, emotion, and connections to the natural world in his vibrant, abstract artworks.
Richard Mayhew, who was known for his hazy abstract paintings that at times resembled landscapes, died on Thursday at the age of 100.
It is with profound sadness that Venus Over Manhattan announces the passing of gallery artist Richard Mayhew, a visionary artist whose luminous "mindscapes" have left an indelible mark on the art world.
In recent years, I have conducted over thirty interviews with artists who have lived to a very old age.
“Landscapes for Richard Mayhew” is a tribute to a renowned artist that links America’s earliest art movements with contemporary art making. As over a dozen prominent African American artists honor the legacy of Richard Mayhew, through landscape painting.
Today is a glorious day marking the 100th birthday of Richard Mayhew. An artist, educator, and U.S. Marine veteran, Mayhew is the last living member of Spiral, the influential artist collective co-founded by Romare Bearden.
Venus Over Manhattan announced today that the gallery now represents artist Richard Mayhew. This announcement follows the gallery’s critically acclaimed exhibition, “Richard Mayhew: Natural Order,” which closed on June 23rd, 2023.
Mayhew has not been embraced by the art world because the trajectory he has pursued challenges the categories to which Black artists are consigned.
With a show in Manhattan, he says he inherited from his Indigenous forebears “inventive consciousness.”
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