Ivan Karp, a fast-talking, a cigar-chomping famous New York gallery owner who had helped in finding, popularizing and marketing the Pop artists of the 1960s era, including Roy Lichtenstein, Robert Rauschenberg and Andy Warhol, died at his home located in Charlotteville, N.Y, at 86. He died of natural causes.
The late collector-owner always found the time and energy to look at the slides of aspiring artists who asked him for the golden echance of a lifetime. He often responded with gallery space, precious encouragement, a much-needed referral to a dealer or rejection.
As Pop art blossomed, Ivan Karp made hundreds of speeches to promote the new art form apart from appearances on TV shows like ‘The Tonight Show’. In 1969, he was among the first few gallery owners to follow artists to SoHo. This industrial area quickly became as much an art gallery hub as the Upper East Side. His gallery, called ‘O K Harris Works of Art, - first at 485 West Broadway - would become the first one on one of the principal boulevards of SoHo. Like several other pioneers, he ventured south of Houston Street and thought of himself as the district’s unofficial mayor.
As motivated as he was to locate the new, Ivan Karp also gained fame for his ability to forage through demolished buildings for unearthing architectural artifacts and remnants, many of which were donated by a society he founded to museums. He and his wife gathered all kinds of odd things — from hatbox papers to washboards to misspelled restaurant menus.
But the mission of his life was to help guide the careers of promising 20th century artists, among them Tom Wesselmann, John Chamberlain and Claes Oldenburg in addition to Warhol, Rauschenberg and Lichtenstein. He became an early proponent of photorealism, the genre that gained currency in the late 1960s.
Once he came across a potential genius, he would do everything possible for helping the artist draw rewards to justify his talents. Citing van Gogh’s fame that came only at the fag end of his life and after his death, Ivan Karp had vowed, “No genius should (and must) go undiscovered.”
The late collector-owner always found the time and energy to look at the slides of aspiring artists who asked him for the golden echance of a lifetime. He often responded with gallery space, precious encouragement, a much-needed referral to a dealer or rejection.
As Pop art blossomed, Ivan Karp made hundreds of speeches to promote the new art form apart from appearances on TV shows like ‘The Tonight Show’. In 1969, he was among the first few gallery owners to follow artists to SoHo. This industrial area quickly became as much an art gallery hub as the Upper East Side. His gallery, called ‘O K Harris Works of Art, - first at 485 West Broadway - would become the first one on one of the principal boulevards of SoHo. Like several other pioneers, he ventured south of Houston Street and thought of himself as the district’s unofficial mayor.
As motivated as he was to locate the new, Ivan Karp also gained fame for his ability to forage through demolished buildings for unearthing architectural artifacts and remnants, many of which were donated by a society he founded to museums. He and his wife gathered all kinds of odd things — from hatbox papers to washboards to misspelled restaurant menus.
But the mission of his life was to help guide the careers of promising 20th century artists, among them Tom Wesselmann, John Chamberlain and Claes Oldenburg in addition to Warhol, Rauschenberg and Lichtenstein. He became an early proponent of photorealism, the genre that gained currency in the late 1960s.
Once he came across a potential genius, he would do everything possible for helping the artist draw rewards to justify his talents. Citing van Gogh’s fame that came only at the fag end of his life and after his death, Ivan Karp had vowed, “No genius should (and must) go undiscovered.”
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