Jeffrey Wasserman was a prolific painter and colorist whose distinguished career as an artist spanned almost four decades, from 1970 to 2006. He is best known for his singular and syncretic style which combined idiosyncratic motifs with vibrant colors and cascading layers of paint washes.
The Jeffrey Wasserman Estate was founded with the goal of expanding awareness of Wasserman's rich oeuvre and to further the placement of Wasserman's work in prominent cultural institutions and private collections. In conjunction with this project, the Estate has preserved and archived a range of materials to promote the study of Wasserman’s work and career, including writings, correspondence, and other personal ephemera.
All inquiries into the works on the website should be directed to the following address: contact@jeffreywasserman.com
Jeffrey Wasserman, a painter who became known in New York in the 1980's for his buoyant, vividly colorful and poetically suggestive abstractions, died Sunday at his home in Millerton, N.Y. He was 59.
The cause was cancer, said his wife, Anne Newburg.
Mr. Wasserman was what admirers call a painter's painter. He was among SoHo's early loft-dwelling artists in the 70's, and he participated in the efflorescence of the East Village scene in the early 80's. His friends included influential postmodernists like Jeff Koons, Peter Halley and Saint Clair Cemin.
His paintings, made with a loose, spontaneous touch in thin layers, featured elemental shapes, arabesque forms and archetypal symbols folded into layered, luminously colored spaces. Though related to the works of earlier modernists like Joan Miró, Hans Hofmann and the Abstract Expressionists, his work was also in sympathy with the playful, pluralistic spirit of the late 70's and early 80's, and he was frequently included in group shows devoted to contemporary abstraction.
Jeffrey Andrew Wasserman was born on July 21, 1946, in Mount Vernon, N.Y. As a teenager, he studied with the Color Field painter Friedel Dzubas, and he went on to earn a B.F.A. degree from the Tyler School of Art in Philadelphia. He did graduate work in painting at the Royal College of Art in London.
Mr. Wasserman's first solo exhibition, at the Municipal Theater in Caen, France, in 1980, was organized by Philippe Briet, who later had a gallery in New York at which Mr. Wasserman had another one-person show. From 1984 to 1995, he had four solo shows in New York, the last at Bill Maynes Contemporary Art.
Besides his wife, he is survived by a daughter, Jane, and a son, Hugo.
