Gandy Brodie

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| name = Gandy Brodie

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| birth_date = {{Birth date|1924|05|20}}

| birth_place = Brooklyn, New York

| death_date = {{Death date and age|1975|10|22|1924|05|20}}

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| field = Painting

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| alma_mater = Self-taught

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| awards = Guggenheim Fellowship

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Gandy Brodie (May 20, 1924 – October 22, 1975) was an American painter working primarily in New York City and Townshend, Vermont, during the middle part of the 20th century.{{cite web|url=http://www.aaa.si.edu/collections/gandy-brodie-papers-7263|title=Summary of the Gandy Brodie papers|date= 1954–1983|publisher= Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution|accessdate=July 10, 2014}} He had ties to Abstract Expressionism through artists such as Willem de Kooning and his style, though singular, was considered second-generation Abstract Expressionism.{{cite web|url=http://hyperallergic.com/53059/gandy-brodie-ten-tenements-steven-harvey-fine-art-projects/|title=A Wonderer Among the Rubble (Part 1)|first= John |last=Yau|publisher= Hyperallergic.com|date= June 17, 2012|accessdate=July 10, 2014}} His paintings were influenced by the works of artists such as Camille Corot, Paul Cézanne, Vincent van Gogh,{{Cite news |date=1975-10-25 |title=GANDY BRODIE, 51, PAINTER, IS DEAD |url=https://www.nytimes.com/1975/10/25/archives/gandy-brodie-51-painter-is-dead-expressionist-exhibited-here-and.html |access-date=2025-05-08 |work=The New York Times |language=en-US |issn=0362-4331}} Piet Mondrian, Chaïm Soutine,{{Cite web |last=Kuspit |first=Donald |date=2006-10-01 |title=“Soutine and Modern Art” |url=https://www.artforum.com/events/soutine-and-modern-art-201674/ |access-date=2025-05-13 |website=Artforum |language=en-US}} Georges Rouault, Pablo Picasso, and Paul Klee.

Personal life

Gabriel Solomon Brodie was born May 20, 1924, in Brooklyn, New York, to a family of Romanian Jewish produce vendors.{{cite book|title=Gandy Brodie archives|section=Family History |location=Burlington VT|others= Shane Brodie}} Brodie lived and worked in and around New York City throughout his life, while also spending extensive time in Florence, Italy, Provincetown, Massachusetts, and West Townshend, Vermont.{{cite web|url=http://www.aaa.si.edu/collections/interviews/oral-history-interview-gandy-brodie-12025 |first=Dorothy |last=Seckler|title=Oral history interview with Gandy Brodie, 1965 Sept. 6|date= 1965|publisher= Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution}} He and his wife Jocelyn Brodie,{{cite web|url=http://guides.library.harvard.edu/content.php?pid=457498&sid=3745805|title= Jocelyn Brodie Papers|publisher= Schlesinger Library, Radcliffe Institute, Harvard, University|accessdate=July 10, 2014}} are remembered for their establishment of The Gandy Brodie School of Art in Newfane, Vermont.{{Citation needed|date=May 2025}} Shane Brody, his only child, is a jazz and Americana guitarist who resides in Underhill, Vermont.{{Citation needed|date=May 2025}}

On October 22, 1975, Brodie died of a heart attack at age 51. A memorial for Brodie was held at The New School for Social Research, in New York City. Among the speakers were Meyer Shapiro and Elaine de Kooning.{{Cite news |date=1975-11-06 |title=Brodie Memorial Monday |url=https://www.nytimes.com/1975/11/06/archives/brodie-memorial-monday.html |access-date=2025-05-08 |work=The New York Times |language=en-US |issn=0362-4331}}

Career

Brodie started out as a self-taught painter, arriving at painting only after studying dance with Martha Graham and delving into the world of jazz and bebop.{{Cite web |last=Yau |first=John |date=2012-06-24 |title=A Wanderer Among The Rubble (Part 2) |url=https://hyperallergic.com/53373/a-wanderer-among-the-rubble-part-2/ |access-date=2025-05-08 |website=Hyperallergic |language=en-US}} Once he discovered painting, he dedicated himself to learning from fellow artists and from works he could access in the museums of New York. After a time, he studied with Hans Hofmann and with the art historian, Meyer Schapiro, who praised Brodie as “one of the best painters of his generation.”{{Cite web |last=Carrier |first=David |date=2023-10-19 |title=Gandy Brodie’s Loaded Brush |url=https://twocoatsofpaint.com/2023/10/gandy-brodies-loaded-brush.html |access-date=2025-05-08 |website=Two Coats of Paint |language=en-US}} Schapiro noted that, "Among the younger painters of nature, Gandy Brodie stands out by his stubbornly personal poetic art. His confrontations of places, persons and things are long‐brooded visions sustained by poignant memories and analogies evoked by his subjects."

He was the recipient of many awards, including a Guggenheim Fellowship,{{cite web|url=http://www.gf.org/fellows|title=John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation list of Fellows|accessdate=July 10, 2014}} a National Council for The Arts Award, a Longview Foundation Purchase Grant, an Ingram Merrill Foundation Award, a Mark Twain Art award, and numerous residencies at colleges and universities nationwide.{{Citation needed|date=May 2025}} In addition, Brodie taught at Carnegie-Mellon University, The University of Pennsylvania and Elmira College, in Elmira New York, where he was a Fine Arts Instructor at the time of his death.

After his death, exhibitions of Brodie's art continued to be shown at the Sidney Janis, Knoedler, Edward Thorpe, and Salander - O'Rielly galleries. Brodie's work is currently represented by Steven Harvey Fine Art Project in New York City.{{Cite web |last=Yau |first=John |date=2023-10-15 |title=What to Do With Our Anger? |url=https://hyperallergic.com/850135/what-to-do-with-our-anger-gandy-brodie/ |access-date=2025-05-08 |website=Hyperallergic |language=en-US}} Brodie’s paintings and drawings can be found in museum collections including the Yale University Art Gallery (New Haven, CT),{{Cite web |title=Still Life (Flower in Water) Yale University Art Gallery |url=https://artgallery.yale.edu/collections/objects/59073 |access-date=2025-05-09 |website=artgallery.yale.edu |language=en}} Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden (Washington, D.C.), the Museum of Modern Art (New York, NY),{{Cite web |title=Gandy Brodie {{!}} MoMA |url=https://www.moma.org/artists/787-gandy-brodie |access-date=2025-05-09 |website=The Museum of Modern Art |language=en}} the Metropolitan Museum of Art (New York, NY),{{Citation |last=Brodie |first=Gandy |title=Faded Poppy |date=1970–72 |url=https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/481189 |access-date=2025-05-09}} the Neuberger Museum of Art (Purchase, NY), the Smithsonian American Art Museum (Washington, D.C.),{{Cite web |title=Gandy Brodie {{!}} Smithsonian American Art Museum |url=https://americanart.si.edu/artist/gandy-brodie-586 |access-date=2025-05-09 |website=americanart.si.edu |language=en}} The Phillips Collection (Washington, D.C.), and the Muscarelle Museum of Art (Williamsburg, Virginia) {{Cite web |title=Artists |url=https://muscarelle.wm.edu/collection/artists/ |access-date=2025-05-13 |website=Muscarelle Museum of Art |language=en-US}}

Artwork

Brodie’s work is characterized by dense, heavily impastoed layers of paint or drawn marks, culminating in an abstract, yet vivid encapsulation of everyday objects such as a flower in a can, a tree in the park, a sea gull over the ocean, or a tenement in New York City. He was known for painting and drawing certain subjects repeatedly throughout his relatively short career. Thematic elements in Brodie's art include still life paintings, urban and rural landscapes, and portraits or profiles of people. The subjects are often, at first glance, indiscernible from thick paint or charcoal marks; however, his reoccurring motifs become more recognizable once viewed in relation to his other works.{{Cite web |last=Yau |first=John |date=2012-06-17 |title=A Wanderer Among the Rubble (Part 1) |url=https://hyperallergic.com/53059/gandy-brodie-ten-tenements-steven-harvey-fine-art-projects/ |access-date=2025-05-08 |website=Hyperallergic |language=en-US}} Critic John Yau asserts that, "for all the scarred and pebbled toughness of their impasto skin, Brodie’s paintings come across as delicate and vulnerable"