Louisiana native Robert Gordy (1933–86) achieved national recognition for masterly compositions that revealed a sophisticated and disciplined interplay of space, line, and color. Although best known today for his prints and late monotypes, Gordy worked in a range of media throughout his career. This exhibition, the first in-depth presentation of the artist’s work at NOMA in over four decades, shares selections from Gordy’s career from the 1950s until his premature death from AIDS in 1986.   

After receiving his MFA from the Louisiana State University in 1956, Gordy lived and worked all over the world, including Mexico, Florence, Ibiza, San Francisco, and New York before settling in New Orleans in 1964. Within a few years, Gordy’s mature painting vocabulary emerged: sharply defined, boldly colored motifs and simplified human forms spread across a shallow picture plane. 

During his lifetime, Gordy’s works were exhibited widely at galleries in New York, Chicago, and New Orleans; in solo exhibitions across the United States and in Scotland; and in significant group shows, including the 1973 Whitney Biennial and at PS1 in New York. Although others associated him with the Pattern & Decoration Movement of the 1970s and early ’80s, and even Chicago’s so-called “Hairy Who,” Gordy remained determinedly unaffiliated, preferring, he said, to work “outside the mainstream.”

In 1982 Gordy turned almost exclusively to the creation of monotypes, unique prints made through the direct application of pigment to the printing plate. While print-making had always been an important component of his practice, it now took precedence. Using a large-scale press, Gordy reveled in the freedom and expressive possibilities afforded by the process. The artist’s gesture—always present in Gordy’s preliminary drawings and sketches, but absent from his completed paintings—sat at the forefront. 

This exhibition is drawn from NOMA’s permanent collection, the archive of the Robert Gordy estate, and generous loans from private collections.