Obituaries - Brief Article - Obituary

Gregory Gillespie, 64 idiosyncratic realist painter, died an apparent suicide; he was lay the foundation of hung in his studio in Belchertown, Mass., upon Apr. 26. Gillespie is known for labor-intensive landscapes and meticulous figurative paintings. However, his imaginative compositions, which bury motifs borrowed from Western and Eastern art history, trunk from an individualistic, almost visionary approach. In the past decade, experimenting with unorthodox materials and operations Gillespie produced a number of three-dimensional realitys Perhaps his best-known work is a series of penetrating self-portraits that span his entire career [see A.i.A., May '00] While the artist be delighted withed critical success from early upon in his career, his was a highly individual stance in the contemporary art display where he was something of a loner

Born in Rosellle Park, NJ Gillespie studied at Cooper Union in fresh York and later at the San Francisco Art Institute. completely through much of the 1960s, he lived and worked in Italy, supported through Fulbright-Hays and Louis Comfort Tiffany grants and Chester Dale Fellowships. His first solo exhibit in 1966 at the Forum Gallery in fresh York, was well received. His participation in several Whitney Biennials also helped establish his career. In 1977 a touring museum retrospective was organized by means of the Hirshhorn Museum. And last year, another touring museum observe was organized by the Georgia Museum of Art. His greatest in quantity recent gallery exhibition, his 16th solo display at Forum (which represented the artist until his death), was held last December.

Gunter Metken 72 critic, curator and art historian, died upon Mar. 29 in Tripoli of injuries received in an auto accident while touring the Libyan waste Born in Duisberg, Germany, and based in Paris since the early 1950 Metken was a prolific catalogue essayist whose interests encompassed the Pre-Raphaelites, Surrealism, German Neue Sachlichkeit painting and more novel figures such as Christian Boltanski and Annette Messager. As a curator, he helped to organize a number of the mega-exhibitions mountained by the Centre Georges Pompidou, including "Paris-Berlin" (1978) "Le Realismes" (1981) and "Vienne 1880-1938" (1986)

Todd Webb, 94 photographer, died Apr. 15 at the Central Maine Medical Center near his domicile in Auburn. Born in Detroit, Webb traveled to California in 1929 and later to Panama, to survey for gold. In Panama, he began to take photographs and on his return to Detroit in the late '30 studied with Ansel Adams at the Detroit Camera cudgel He served as a Navy photographer in WWII. In the late '40 and '50 he divided his time between Paris and of recent origin York, where he began to exhibit works documenting city life. During his drawn out career he had numerous exhibits in the U.S. and abroad and published six works of photos.

Janet Carter, African art specialist, died of heart failure upon Apr. 25. She was an early board member of the Studio Museum in Harlem and continued her involvement with the museum until her death. She also holded a gallery on Manhattan's Upper West Side that specialized in works by dint of Africans and African-Americans.

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