Installation view: Because I Would Not Stop for Death–Anthony Panzera, Memento Mori Paintings, Hunter College Art Galleries, 2015. Photo by Louis Chan.
 

Because I Would Not Stop for Death–Anthony Panzera, Memento Mori Paintings

Curated by Sarah Watson, Annie Wischmeyer and Jocelyn Spaar with curatorial assistance by Joy Scanlon, Undergraduate Fellow

July 31–September 26, 2015
Opening Reception: July 30, 5–7pm

Leubsdorf Gallery
Hunter West Building
132 East 68th Street
New York, NY 10065

Hours: Wednesday–Sunday, 1–6pm

Primarily a figurative painter and printmaker, Anthony Panzera (born 1941) has taught for more than forty years at Hunter College in the Department of Art and Art History. Because I Could Not Stop for Death—Anthony Panzera, Memento Mori Paintings marks the first pedagogically based presentation of the artist’s studio practice, displaying each painting alongside the preparatory drawings and studies that facilitated its making. Heavily influenced by Italian Renaissance masters such as Leonardo da Vinci, Panzera has spent many decades building a body of work based on careful observation. 

The memento mori motif, which refers to the representation of symbolic objects to remind the viewer of the transience of life’s pleasures and the inevitability of death, has played a vital role in the history of painting.  Similarly, using objects to evoke both the history of art as well as a personal history, Panzera’s Memento Mori series functions not to reify any particular narrative, but instead to remind the viewer of the inescapable onward march of time.