“The only gadgets that fascinate me are the gadgets of the human body. They are the ones that have been neglected, overlooked, in favor of washing machines and ballpoint pens, an air-conditioned home.” Harold Stevenson, 1962
Andrew Kreps Gallery is pleased to announce an exhibition of works by Harold Stevenson (b. 1929, d. 2018). Curated with Schwartzman&, the exhibition is the first devoted to Stevenson's work in New York in over twenty years, and is organized in collaboration with the artist's estate. A parallel exhibition centered on the artist’s time in Europe will be on view at Tommaso Calabro Gallery, 545 W 23rd St., New York from May 1 - May 31, 2025. A reception for both exhibitions will be held on Friday, May 2 from 6 -8 pm.
Stevenson, who was born in Idabel, Oklahoma, first moved to New York in 1949 upon receiving a scholarship to the Art Students League, where he studied under the painter Yasuo Kuniyoshi. Stevenson found formal arts education to be too restrictive, and dropped out shortly thereafter. A subsequent chance meeting with Andy Warhol, who had arrived in the city the same year, led to a lasting friendship, with Stevenson later appearing in Warhol’s first films. This moment underscored a certain magnetism that would define Stevenson’s idiosyncratic career, his connections often kaleidoscopic in nature. The prominent art dealer Alexander Iolas offered Stevenson his first exhibition in 1949, and remained a steadfast supporter of his work, enabling him to move to Paris in the late fifties. While in Europe, Stevenson befriended Peggy Guggenheim and entered into a relationship with Lord Timothy Willoughby, who would model for his paintings until his disappearance at sea in 1963.
Resolutely itinerant throughout his life, moving between Europe, New York, Key West and Idabel, Stevenson's desire for freedom of expression remained persistent. He was unabashed about the often sensual content of his work, even in the face of censorship. His monumental 1962 painting The New Adam, described by Holland Cotter as “one of the great American nudes,” was struck from the exhibition Six Painters and the Object, at the Guggenheim, New York. In 1964, Italian police confiscated his paintings from an exhibition in Venice, nearly landing his then-dealer, Iris Clert in prison.
However, Stevenson’s interest was not purely sensationalistic, but aimed to depict the whole of human experience, including desire. Enlarging fragments of the body in tightly cropped compositions, his works focus on isolated gestures. In his 1963 work, The Raft of Medusa, included in the exhibition, an open mouth is recast as a metaphor for the vastness and violence of the sea, with Théodore Géricault's famed painting of the same title approximated within. Paintings of decorative objects clenched tightly between fingers adopt a nearly devotional tenor, while open eyes, and mouths evoke tension and suspense beyond the works’ frames. Together, Stevenson’s works demonstrate the myriad ways in which the body can be used as a tool for communication.
This summer, Art Omi will present Harold Stevenson: Less Real Than My Routine Fantasy, the first institutional solo exhibition of Stevenson’s work in New York, curated by Senior Curator Sara O’Keeffe. Opening on June 28, the exhibition explores Stevenson's unflinching commitment to the sensual for more than five decades, and insistence on placing his paintings in the public sphere in a pre-Stonewall era. Rendering armpits, belly buttons, mouths as total environments and expanded erogenous zones, the project brings together Stevenson's work across painting, sculpture, and text, long overdue for critical reappraisal. A posthumous survey exhibition of Stevenson’s work was presented at the Museum of the Red River, Idabel, Oklahoma, in 2020. In 2022, his work The Eye of Lightning Billy, 1962 was included in New York: 1962 - 1964 at the Jewish Museum, New York. Stevenson exhibited extensively throughout his life, including in the landmark 1962 exhibition New Realists at Sidney Janis Gallery, New York. His work was shown in the 1963 Whitney Annual and included in both the Piccola Biennale, 1962 and the Biennale Flottante, 1964, organized by Iris Clert as collateral events of the Venice Biennale. In 1999, Stevenson’s painting The New Adam, 1962, was exhibited at the Andy Warhol Museum, Pittsburgh. Harold Stevenson maintained a close relationship to his hometown of Idabel, returning frequently throughout his life, often documenting its broader community in his work. In 2005, he moved back permanently, where he continued to paint until his death in 2018.
Harold Stevenson’s works are held in the permanent collections of the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, DC, Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York, Yale University Art Gallery, New Haven, Oklahoma City Museum of Art, and the Blanton Gallery at the University of Texas, Austin, among others.