Threnody

Threnody Looking West


"The painting of Threnody occupied me for the years 1972-73. I felt that tragedy had been manifested more intensely during those years and in the preceding decade than at any other time in American history. Iniquity, futile death and destruction surrounded us with little relief. This sense of tragedy in the sixties and seventies insisted itself upon me as the subject matter for the walls I had been asked to paint in the Neuberger Museum, for I felt that the heroic space encompassed by these walls — roughly 100' x 60' x 22' high — required an heroic subject. The vertical form in each of the fourteen panels is a symbol which conforms to my understanding of reality — the inseparability of life from death, the reconciliation of opposites. Yin and Yang."   -C.G. 1975

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Copyright © Cleve Gray 2000. All rights.