Kevin Larmee (born 1946)James Sheehan, "Larmee: in from the street," ''East Informer'', October 1985. is an American painter, best known for his association with the East Village art movement in

New York City New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the List of United States cities by population, most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the L ...

in the 1980s.

Early life

Larmee was born in Ridgefield Park, New Jersey, and raised in a suburb of

Chicago, Illinois (''City in a Garden''); I Will , image_map = , map_caption = Interactive Map of Chicago , coordinates = , coordinates_footnotes = , subdivision_type = Country , subdivision_name ...

.Jonathan Mandell, "Urban Artifacts," ''

New York Daily News The New York ''Daily News'', officially titled the ''Daily News'', is an American newspaper based in Jersey City, NJ. It was founded in 1919 by Joseph Medill Patterson as the ''Illustrated Daily News''. It was the first U.S. daily printed in ta ...

'', August 18, 1985. He attended Shimer College, then located in

Mount Carroll, Illinois Mount Carroll is a city in Carroll County, Illinois, United States. It is the Carroll County seat. The population was 1479 at the 2020 census. Due to its elevation and northwesterly location, Mount Carroll is subject to unusually cold winter wea ...

, from 1965 to 1967, attended the

San Francisco Art Institute San Francisco Art Institute (SFAI) was a private college of contemporary art in San Francisco, California. Founded in 1871, SFAI was one of the oldest art schools in the United States and the oldest west of the Mississippi River. Approximately ...

from 1967 to 1968, and returned to Shimer for the 1969-1970 academic year. He and his wife, Susan Isono, moved to New York City in 1979, living in

SoHo Soho is an area of the City of Westminster, part of the West End of London. Originally a fashionable district for the aristocracy, it has been one of the main entertainment districts in the capital since the 19th century. The area was develop ...

with their son, Blaise Larmee, who was born in 1985.

Career

Painting

In the early 1980s, the art scene in New York City began to shift from the SoHo neighborhood to the grittier East Village, with the opening of many new galleries there.Helen A. Harrison, "Urban Anxieties Reflected In Paintings From East Village," ''

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'', August 17, 1986. In 1984, feeling that his work was not getting enough attention from the art world, Larmee started pasting his large painted murals outdoors, in the middle of the night, on the walls of buildings mostly near art centers around

Lower Manhattan Lower Manhattan (also known as Downtown Manhattan or Downtown New York) is the southernmost part of Manhattan, the central borough for business, culture, and government in New York City, which is the most populated city in the United States with ...

.Victoria Donohoe
“Show Emphasizes New Genre Painting,”
'' Philadelphia Inquirer'', October 18, 1986.Stephanie Arena, "Kevin Larmee," ''Pulp'', July/August 1990.Matthew Rose, "Kevin Larmee," '' Arts Magazine'', May 1986. He would check in on them frequently for maintenance against the elements, and graffiti writers. The paintings would sometimes stay up for months before being removed or defaced.Robyn Perry
“Private Eye,”
''Artillery Magazine'', Vol. 3, No. 3, January/February 2009. Larmee soon began getting gallery exhibits in New York and elsewhere in the US, while continuing to create street art. Larmee became part of a movement of established gallery artists creating street art. He was represented by the Avenue B Gallery on the Lower East Side for several years in the 1980s. The gallery closed near the end of the decade. Larmee had prints in the

Brooklyn Museum The Brooklyn Museum is an art museum located in the New York City borough of Brooklyn. At , the museum is New York City's second largest and contains an art collection with around 1.5 million objects. Located near the Prospect Heights, Crown H ...

's 24th National Print Exhibition, ''Public and Private: American Prints Today'', that traveled to various museums around the country in 1986. His 1985 lithograph ''Cigarette'' is part of the Brooklyn Museum's permanent collection, and he also has pieces in the permanent collections of the Grand Rapids Art Museum, Indianapolis Museum of Art and Toledo Museum of Art, among others. In 1989, Larmee and his family moved to Chicago, where he continues to paint.Barbara B. Buchholz
“Elke Claus’ Vivid ‘Information’,”
''

Chicago Tribune The ''Chicago Tribune'' is a daily newspaper based in Chicago, Illinois, United States, owned by Tribune Publishing. Founded in 1847, and formerly self-styled as the "World's Greatest Newspaper" (a slogan for which WGN radio and television ar ...

'', April 18, 1997.

Style

Larmee's paintings of the 1980s were often set in nighttime urban environments, placing one or two solitary individuals on deserted streets or subway platforms, or in front of glowing bodies of water, juxtaposing the minimal figures with sharp colors and layers of patterns. His technique has been described as "loosely brushed and coarsely textured." ''

The New York Times ''The New York Times'' (''the Times'', ''NYT'', or the Gray Lady) is a daily newspaper based in New York City with a worldwide readership reported in 2020 to comprise a declining 840,000 paid print subscribers, and a growing 6 million paid ...

'' wrote in 1986 that his paintings of moments on a subway platform "vibrate with the concentrated energy of moving trains." Indicative of his street pieces is ''Blonde with Cigarette'', which shows a man standing, holding a cigarette, his empty eyes staring at the ground, with the New York skyline behind him. Influenced by

impressionism Impressionism was a 19th-century art movement characterized by relatively small, thin, yet visible brush strokes, open Composition (visual arts), composition, emphasis on accurate depiction of light in its changing qualities (often accentuating ...

, his canvases were often heavily painted and textured, with flattened-out figures, and a controlled composition.Jacqueline Hall, "Divergent Lancaster shows reveal three faces of art," ''

The Columbus Dispatch ''The Columbus Dispatch'' is a daily newspaper based in Columbus, Ohio. Its first issue was published on July 1, 1871, and it has been the only mainstream daily newspaper in the city since ''The Columbus Citizen-Journal'' ceased publication in 19 ...

'', July 20, 1986.

Exhibitions (selected)

White Columns White Columns is New York City’s oldest alternative non-profit art space. White Columns is known as a showcase for up-and-coming artists, and is primarily devoted to emerging artists who are not affiliated with galleries. All work submitted is ...

, New York, NY, 1983 * Solo exhibition, Avenue B Gallery, New York, NY, 1984 * ''Micro Show'', Now Gallery, New York, NY, 1984 *

ABC No Rio ABC No Rio is a collectively-run non-profit arts organization on New York City's Lower East Side. It was founded in 1980 in a squat at 156 Rivington Street, following the eviction of the 1979-80 Real Estate Show. The centre featured an art gal ...

, New York, NY, 1984 * Fashion Moda, New York, NY, 1984 * ''Sex'', Sharpe Gallery, New York, NY, 1984 * ''New York, New Art'', Vorpal Gallery, San Francisco, CA, 1985 * Solo exhibition, Avenue B Gallery, New York, NY, 1985 * ''Contemporary Visions '85'', Zolla/Lieberman Gallery, Chicago, IL, 1985 * ''East Village'',

Fashion Institute of Technology The Fashion Institute of Technology (FIT) is a public college in New York City. It is part of the State University of New York (SUNY) and focuses on art, business, design, mass communication, and technology connected to the fashion industry. It ...

, New York, NY, 1986 * Solo exhibition, Avenue B Gallery, New York, NY, 1986 * ''New York: East Village Exhibit'', Lancaster, OH, 1986 * Solo exhibition, Giannetta Gallery, Philadelphia, PA, 1986 * ''Eight Urban Painters'', Fine Arts Center Gallery of the

State University of New York at Stony Brook Stony Brook University (SBU), officially the State University of New York at Stony Brook, is a public research university in Stony Brook, New York. Along with the University at Buffalo, it is one of the State University of New York system's ...

, 1986 * ''Public and Private: American Prints Today'',

, Brooklyn, NY;

Flint Institute of Arts The Flint Institute of Arts, also called FIA, is located in the Flint Cultural Center in Flint, Michigan. The second largest art museum in Michigan, it offers exhibitions, interpretive programs, film screenings, concerts, lectures, family events ...

, Flint, MI;

Rhode Island School of Design The Rhode Island School of Design (RISD , pronounced "Riz-D") is a private art and design school in Providence, Rhode Island. The school was founded as a coeducational institution in 1877 by Helen Adelia Rowe Metcalf, who sought to increase the ...

, Providence, RI;

Carnegie Museum of Art The Carnegie Museum of Art, is an art museum in the Oakland neighborhood of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Originally known as the Department of Fine Arts, Carnegie Institute and was at what is now the Main Branch of the Carnegie Library of Pittsbur ...

, Pittsburgh, PA;

Walker Art Center The Walker Art Center is a multidisciplinary contemporary art center in the Lowry Hill neighborhood of Minneapolis, Minnesota, United States. The Walker is one of the most-visited modern and contemporary art museums in the United States and, t ...

, Minneapolis, MN; 1986–87 * Solo exhibition, Signet Arts, St. Louis, MO, 1987 * Solo exhibition, Natalie Bush Gallery, San Diego, CA, 1987 * ''The Eccentric Landscape'', Esther Saks Gallery, Chicago, IL, 1990 * Solo exhibition, Eastwick Gallery, Chicago, IL, 1997 * ''The Art of Democracy'',

Loyola University Museum of Art The Loyola University Museum of Art (LUMA), which opened in the fall of 2005, is unique among Chicago's many museums for mounting exhibits that explore the spiritual in art from all cultures, faiths, and eras. LUMA is located on Loyola Universit ...

, Chicago, IL, 2008

References

External links

Official website
{{DEFAULTSORT:Larmee, Kevin Living people 1946 births 20th-century American painters American male painters 21st-century American painters 21st-century American male artists Painters from New York City Artists from Chicago People from Ridgefield Park, New Jersey Shimer College alumni San Francisco Art Institute alumni American Expressionist painters Street artists American graffiti artists Neo-expressionist artists 20th-century American male artists