Robert de Niro, Sr.

"Nude Leaning on Back of Chair" Robert de Niro Sr., Female Nude, New York School

1970

Robert De Niro Sr. was born in Syracuse, New York, to an Irish-American mother, Helen M. (née O'Reilly; 1899–1999). Helen's mother was Mary E. Burns (born to John and Mary Burns) and her father was Dennis Francis O'Reilly, born to Dundrum's Ellen Hall, the second wife of Edward O'Reilly.[4] There was previous confusion about Dennis' maternity, his mother previously thought to be Edward's second wife Margaret.[5] Robert was the eldest of three children; he and siblings John and Joan were raised in Syracuse. De Niro studied at Black Mountain College under Josef Albers from 1939 to 1940. While Albers' highly analytical approach to painting did not appeal to De Niro's more instinctive style, the experience and international perspective of the Bauhaus master nonetheless left a lasting impression. De Niro studied with Hans Hofmann at his Provincetown, Massachusetts, summer school. Hofmann's teaching on Abstract Expressionism and Cubist formalism had a strong influence on De Niro's development as a mature artist. At Hofmann's summer school, he met fellow student Virginia Admiral, whom he married in 1942. The couple moved into a large, airy loft in New York's Greenwich Village, where they were able to paint. After studying with Hans Hofmann in New York and Provincetown and Josef Albers at Black Mountain College, North Carolina in the late 1930s and early 1940s, De Niro worked for five years at Hilla Rebay's legendary Museum of Non-Objective Art. In 1945, he was included in a group show at Peggy Guggenheim's Art of This Century in New York, which was a leading gallery for the art of both established European modernists and members of the emerging Abstract Expressionist group like Jackson Pollock, Mark Rothko, Robert Motherwell, and Clyfford Still. De Niro had his first solo exhibition at Guggenheim's gallery in April and May of the following year. At that point, he was primarily working in an abstract manner, often with figural references. Much of his work from this period was lost in a studio fire in 1949. Critics praised DeNiro's compositions filled with improvised areas of vibrant color that gave way to loosely painted still lifes and curvaceous nudes. By the mid-1950s, De Niro was regularly included in important group exhibitions such as the Whitney Annual, the Stable Annual, and the Jewish Museum. He was awarded a Longview Foundation award in 1958. From 1961 to 1964, De Niro traveled to France to paint in Paris and in the surrounding countryside. Collector Joseph Hirshhorn purchased a number of the artist's paintings and works on paper during this period through De Niro's gallerist, Virginia Zabriskie, which are now in the permanent collection of the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden in Washington, DC. In 1968, he was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship.