Yale School of Art presents work discovered in studio of Robert Reed, artist and educator

This fall the Yale School of Art will present an exhibition of work discovered in the New Haven studio of renowned artist Robert Reed (1938 – 2014) B.A. ’60 M.F.A. ’62, a professor of painting at Yale for nearly 50 years.

The exhibition, “Robert Reed: Non-Stop Paintings,” has been selected by Robert Storr, professor of painting and printmaking and dean of the School of Art, and will be on view at the school’s Green Hall Gallery, 1156 Chapel St., from Oct. 12 through Nov. 12, 2015. The show is free and open to the public Mondays – Fridays from 10 a.m to 6 p.m.

“Robert Reed: Non-Stop Paintings” includes approximately 30 works by the artist from the 1960s onward. It opens with examples of his austerely geometric but emphatically painterly abstract canvases, similar to one on display in the Whitney Museum of American Art’s new Renzo Piano building. Also on view will be paintings from Reed’s later years, distinguished by a structural complexity, dynamism, and vibrancy characteristic of his work.

Reed taught at Yale from 1969 until his death last winter — the longest tenure of any Yale School of Art faculty member of his era — and had a profound influence on generations of emerging artists. According to the exhibition organizers, Reed is remembered by many of his students as an inspiring and demanding teacher, and by the public as a singularly vigorous painter. His work has been exhibited in major museums across the United States and Europe, and is in the permanent collections of the Hirshhorn Museum in Washington, D.C., the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis, the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York, the Fralin Museum of Art at the University of Virginia, and the Yale University Art Gallery.

Reed lectured extensively and was founder and director of the Institute for Studio Studies in Auvillar, France, which is associated with the Yale Summer Session. The recipient of numerous honors, Reed was awarded a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts in 1980. He received the Distinguished Teaching of Art award from the College Art Association in 2004, and in 2009 was elected to the National Academy Fellowship in New York.

The opening for “Robert Reed: Non-Stop Paintings” will take place Monday, Oct. 19, from 5:30 to 7.30 p.m. at the Yale School of Art. A closing reception is scheduled for Thursday, Nov. 12 from 5:30 to 7.30 p.m. at the same location. Both events are free and open to the public.

The exhibition will be accompanied by an illustrated catalog with an essay by Storr.