Memories of Robert De Niro, Sr

De Niro, Sr was one of many former Hofmann students that taught at Parsons

One of the former Hans Hofmann students I met while I was a student at Parsons in 1988-1990 was Robert De Niro, Sr. He stopped by our big communal studio space a few times each semester to see what people were painting and to talk about art history. He usually came through the 14th Street door to our giant room pushing his bicycle which had a basket on the front for his tiny white poodle. He wore a big clunky bike helmet (unusual for those days), a flannel shirt and looked pretty out of place in Manhattan. Paul Resika invited lots of former Hofmann students: Anne Tabachnik, Jane Freilicher, Nell Blaine, to be visiting artists. I think Bob would just turn up because he wanted company. The studio can be a lonely place for everyone.

I didn’t really know Bob’s paintings but he looked at my figure drawings and paintings and said I should stop by his studio if I wanted. He handed me his number. I had just come back from my first trip to France and I think that was partly why we connected. He lived and painted in an apartment on West Broadway not far from where I was staying on Greene Street. I remember his black intercom in the doorway next to I Tre Merli. I occasionally walk by there when I’m back in NYC thinking of the artists I was lucky to know.

Robert De Niro, Sr. in his SOHO studio 1958. Courtesy De Niro, Sr. Foundation.

Bob’s studio looked different when I was there in 1990. He had custom racks to store the paintings and there were nice furnishings and new curtains. He told me to sit down where he could take paintings in and out the racks and showed me lots of work, figure paintings like these below, some framed, some unframed.

Robert De Niro, Sr, “Blue Dress, Blue Hair,” 1961 oil/paper, 29x21 inches.

Robert De Niro, Sr.

The paintings above with their strong lines wrapping the colors and the forms are the kind I recall him taking out and I must have had a blank look on my face because he said “you don’t get it, right"? I didn’t get it. I was still really into Corot and Diebenkorn and was just barely beginning to appreciate Derain, Matisse and Leger, who are now some of my favorites and were clearly very important to him. He sat down and started twirling his turquoise rings and talking about Velazquez and Giacometti. (Looking back I can’t believe we didn’t talk about Matisse. And what I would give to go back in time and be able to ask better questions.)

Sometimes I get confused and I think I visited Bob’s studio before I set off on my first trip to France in 1989, but I know we were talking around February/March, 1990, because it was shortly after the big Velazquez retrospective at the Met. Many of the teachers at Parsons and The New York Studio School, Bob’s peers and friends, were big Giacometti people, especially Leland Bell. They were obsessed with Giacometti. But Bob said very clearly, “look, painting is hard, but I don’t want someone reminding me of that. That’s not painting’s purpose. That’s why I don’t respond to Giacometti and prefer Velazquez. Painting is always hard but you don’t need to show people that part!” I’ve always remembered this comment. He told me about how he had moved to New Mexico hopeful that he could be happy there, be himself and just work. He said, “You know what I discovered in New Mexico? That I’m a European. I don’t belong in the desert.”

Bob looked very much like in this photo. He wore lots of rings, a patterned shirt, curly hair, thin. He spoke very personally, but also was a bit awkward and restless. He was gentle but very animated, like his paintings. He said his studio life was hard because every time someone came over to see his paintings, they started asking about Bobby. He made it clear we weren’t going to talk about Bobby.

Below is a 1968 painting that I find to be incredibly inspiring. It encapsulates much of 20th century painting, but I wonder how many people can realize that unless you’ve visited museums and know art history. I’ve finally caught up a little to where Bob was at during my studio visit. I get the feeling, the color, the surface and I get how his paintings are clearly and effortlessly about their time. He’s an artist that makes it look easy when it’s not.

I get that the paintings are plastic and lived and conceptual and that they synthesize Bob’s experience of art history and the New York School. He was painting alongside of Rothko and Pollock and had been heavily influenced by the Hofmann School and the notion that serious painters had to confront European Modernism, but not imitate it.

In 2016, I attended a private screening of the HBO film, Remembering the Artist: Robert De Niro, Sr., at Villa Taverna in Rome. Some of Bob’s paintings were on view at Villa Taverna, the residence of the US Ambassador to Italy, and 10 of my paintings were on view there as well. It was a powerful experience for me to be showing in the same place, especially because Bob had given me some good advice, some good insight when I was trying to reconcile my own direction and influences. How lucky to attend the intimate screening. Robert De Niro was there and I ended up having a drink with him and shared the stories I remembered of his father. We talked about the Hofmann school, the struggle to follow one’s own heart and how brave his father had been to lead his life his way.