Very sad news: Manuel Neri, the essential and only sculptor of the Bay Area figurative movement, son of Mexican farm workers, influenced by Gen 1 ( Park, Diebenkorn, Oliviera, Bischoff, Weeks) but his own man, husband ( of Joan Brown in early years), roommates with Jay de Feo even earlier, father ( of Ruby Neri) later, has died at 91.
A student of Peter Voulkos, Neri traveled throughout the US with Billy Al Bengston ( what a trip that must have been), was the first person to organize a reading of Allen Ginsberg’s Howl, was into Funk art, antiquity and color. He left the figure for a while, explored anew abstraction, got into minimalism, returned to the figure. He mostly devoted himself to the female figure. “I wanted an image that expressed all of mankind and for me the female does that.”
This is a rare painting, Nude Model with Bischoff Painting , 1958, before he had fully given over to sculpture. Don’t you agree he could have gone either way?
Joan Brown Was Inspired By Her Personal Life
This painting of Joan Brown’s, Noel in the Kitchen from 1964 shows her early concentration on subjects more domestic and personal than her other Bay Area figurative colleagues and mentors. This is her son Noel reaching toward the counter as his pjs slip away surrounded by two dogs as big as he is. Brown and Manuel Neri were in the midst of family life and the excitement of their work which in Brown’s case extended to thick impasto. “I loved what happened when I was using the trowel…the physical exuberance of just whipping through it with a giant brush”
Sculptor Manuel Neri Creates His Place in the Bay Area Figurative
In general, sculpture is considered separately from painting. But there is one sculptor, Manuel Neri, who today at 91 can look back at his career as someone who was an important part of the Bay Area Figurative movement.
Another Gen 2 artist who was attached to the Beats and to Funk Art, Neri was nevertheless deeply influenced by his time as a student of Diebenkorn, Bischoff, Weeks, Oliviera and the work of the gone-too-early David Park. But Neri instead took the interest in the form and color three dimensionally.
Neri was from a Mexican immigrant family that had worked as laborers in the Central Valley. After a high school class in ceramics, and a course at the California College of Arts and Crafts, and a connection there to grad student Peter Voulkos who became his teacher and mentor, Neri served in Korea, and then traveled through Mexico with Billy Al Bengston (you see how the California artists begin to interconnect). Neri even invited Alan Ginsberg to read Howl in a debut of the piece.
He began by painting, but Diebenkorn thought he was a 'lousy painter' and that he should stick to sculpture. The early examples of his work are Picasso-esque constructions of wood and plaster, and very much in the vein of folk art. But Neri often decapitated his figures too, aiming for a kind of Greek archetype
He also lived with Jay De Feo who influenced him. "I'm a true romantic," he once said. But his more significant attachment was to come later as one half the power couple of the era with Joan Brown which provoked important exchanges including in this piece, Seated Girl from 1964 in a private collection and which sprang from a drawing of her. You can see the Parkian influence of color and shape.
Neri left the figure for a time but returned to it in the 70's and has devoted most of his career to this expressionistic form. He now also has fame as the father of Ruby Neri, another inventive sculptor.