David Eichholtz
May 21, 20192 min
Mark Dagley
The Death of Mary Meyer, 2013
Acrylic on canvas
63" x 48" x 1.25"
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David Richard Gallery, LLC
211 East 121 ST | New York, NY 10035
P: (212) 882-1705
www.davidrichardgallery.com
Mark Dagley, like many others in Washington, D.C. knew of the artist Mary Pinchot Meyer, but had not seen much of her artwork. He was interested in seeing her paintings first-hand, particularly since she was very active in the early 1960s, the time of the burgeoning group of Washington Color Painters and vibrant art scene in D.C. Unfortunately, the intrigue regarding her personal life and mysterious early death over-shadowed her artistic endeavors. More unfortunate was, and still is, the scarcity of her work in public collections and institutions. Following Dagley's own research, he found only a couple of images of her paintings, including the one from the Smithsonian American Art Museum that is most frequently referenced. Thus, Dagley created a painting that embodied the characteristics of Meyer's work as he best understood from his research as well as the iconic approaches used by the Washington Color Painters at that time.
Coincidentally, Artsy.net just published a very interesting article, The Forgotten Female Artist Who May Have Been Murdered by the CIA, written by Alina Cohen on May 16, 2019. It provides more information about Mary Meyer and why she was so interesting to so many people. It is attached below for you to read if you would like to get a glimpse into the life and career this relatively unknown female artist from Washington, D.C. in the early 1960s.
The Forgotten Female Artist Who May Have Been Murdered by the CIA
By Alina Cohen, May 16, 2019
Artsy.net
Left: Mary Pinchot Meyer at JFK’s 46th birthday party, 1963. Image via Wikimedia Commons.
Right: Mary Pinchot Meyer, Half Light, 1964. Courtesy of the Smithsonian American Art Museum.
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Mary Pinchot Meyer’s Cold War ties, family tragedies, high-profile affairs, and untimely death eclipse the story of her artistic development. Her gruesome murder in 1964, when Meyer was 43, has become a source of conspiracy theories, with some followers alleging CIA involvement. The results of this intrigue have obscured her artistic practice, and it’s difficult to find pictures of her work online. Even Meyer’s biographer, Nina Burleigh, omitted images of the painter’s blocky, colorful canvases from the 1998 book A Very Private Woman: The Life and Unsolved Murder of Presidential Mistress Mary Meyer. Instead, readers are left with only capsule descriptions of Meyers’s individual paintings and an overarching view of her aesthetic principles.
Dagley’s painting, The Death of Mary Meyer, 2013 was included in the recent exhibition, Mark Dagley, Neo-Op presented at David Richard Gallery in New York from March 3 through 31, 2019.
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Installation View: Mark Dagley, Neo-Op presented at David Richard Gallery in New York
Click here to go to the exhibition
Installation View: Mark Dagley, Neo-Op presented at David Richard Gallery in New York
Click here to view the exhibition
Installation View: Mark Dagley, Neo-Op presented at David Richard Gallery in New York
Click here to go to the exhibition
All Artworks © Mark Dagley
Photos by Yao Zu Lu