Background
Gandy Brodie was born on May 20, 1924 in New York City, into the family of Romanian Jewish produce vendors Max and Minnie (Tau) Brodie.
Columbia University
Gandy Brodie was born on May 20, 1924 in New York City, into the family of Romanian Jewish produce vendors Max and Minnie (Tau) Brodie.
Gandy traveled and studied abroad, studied with Martha Graham and the Hans Hofmann at School of Fine Arts, with Mr. Schapiro at Columbia University and at the New School, and with Lionello Venturi in Rome.
Once Gandy Brodie discovered painting, he dedicated himself to learning from fellow artists and from works he could access in the museums of New York. After a time, he studied with Hans Hofmann and with the art historian, Meyer Schapiro, who praised Brodie as “one of the best painters of his generation.”
Gandy was the winner of many awards, including a Guggenheim Fellowship, a National Council for The Arts Award, a Longview Foundation Purchase Grant, an Ingram Merrill Foundation Award, a Mark Twain Art award, and numerous residencies at colleges and universities nationwide. In addition, Brodie taught at Carnegie-Mellon University, The University of Pennsylvania, and Elmira College, in Elmira New York, where he was a Fine Arts Instructor at the time of his death.
Brodie’s work is characterized by dense layers of paint, or drawn marks, culminating in an abstract, yet vivid encapsulation of everyday objects such as a flower in a can, a tree in the park, a sea gull over the ocean, or a tenement in New York. The subjects are often, at first glance, indiscernible from thick paint or charcoal marks; however, his reoccurring motifs become more recognizable once viewed in relation to his other works.
Brodie died on October 22, 1975 at the age of 51. A memorial for Brodie was held at The New School for Social Research, in New York City. Among the speakers were Meyer Shapiro and Elaine de Kooning. After his death, exhibitions of Brodie's art continued to be shown at the Sidney Janis, Knoedler, Edward Thorpe, and Salander - O'Rielly galleries.
Brodie's work is currently represented by Steven Harvey Fine Art Project, New York. Brodie’s paintings and drawings can be found in Museum collections including the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Neuberger Museum of Art, and The Phillips Collection.
Snowy Day and Willow
Untitled (tenement)
Anemonie in Rusted Can
John Coltrane
Self-Portrait
Fruit
Dead Cardinal
Reflection of lonely objects
Onions and Pineapples
Young Bather
Harlequin and Cat (Charlie Chaplin)
Apple Blossom Branch
The Penetration of a Thought
City Anguish
The Astronaut
Thomas Mann Gladiolas
Mushrooms
Three Birches
Florentine Wall with Trees
Jocelyn
Tree in the City
Still Life after Van Gogh
His paintings’ rough, uneven surfaces compress the gritty exterior walls of the Lower East Side with its multilayered interiors, painted over and over like tenement apartment walls while left unprotected against the ravages of time and the elements. At the heart of Brodie’s worldview is a profound understanding of neglect and solitariness — his subjects include a lone gull, an astronaut floating in space, a flowerpot of red gladiolas, a bird’s nest, a thin bare tree growing on a street, a fallen tree and a tenement as solid and flat as a gravestone.
Gandy was, as Dore Ashton wrote nearly a decade after his death, “a proud and contentious outsider.”
Quotes from others about the person
Walking down the street with him was like going into a bar in a hick town with a population of two hundred. Everybody knew him.
Brody married Jocelyn Levine on January 25, 1955. Shane Brody, there only child, is a jazz and Americana guitarist who resides in Underhill, Vermont.