Rivers is asking a radical question:
In this piece, notice the hands. The hands in Growing are enormous, disproportionate, and rendered almost entirely in charcoal pencil over a thin wash of oil. They hover near the groin and the heart—two centers of biological growth. The fingers look like roots digging into the soil of the torso. It is gross, tender, and utterly profound. Currently, Growing (1981) resides in a private collection in New York, though it was exhibited as part of the Larry Rivers: The Last Decade retrospective at the Jewish Museum (then traveling to the Corcoran Gallery) in the mid-1990s. If you are attempting to locate this piece for academic study, your best resource is the Larry Rivers Foundation archives. The work is rarely traded, as it is considered a crown jewel of his late period. growing 1981 larry rivers
If you ever stand before this painting, do not look for hope. Look for honesty. Rivers offers no antidote to death, only a magnificent, sprawling, messy acknowledgment of the process. In 1981, Larry Rivers was growing. He was growing older, wiser, and more ruthless in his vision. And he left that growth on the canvas for us to witness—a beautiful, rotting garden of American art. Rivers is asking a radical question: In this
Its influence can be seen in the work of later artists like John Currin (in the distorted flesh tones) and even in the melancholic self-portraits of Alice Neel, though Neel was Rivers’ contemporary. What makes Growing unique is its refusal to be beautiful. It is ugly in the way that a biopsy is ugly—revealing the truth beneath the skin. Searching for "growing 1981 Larry Rivers" is not simply a query about a painting; it is an inquiry into how we age. In this monumental work, Larry Rivers took a universal verb—"growing"—and twisted it until it bled irony. He showed us that to grow is to accumulate loss. To grow is to watch your children surpass you. To grow is to watch the plant wither even as it reaches for the sun. The fingers look like roots digging into the
Growing is a quintessential Larry Rivers—lyrical, vulgar, intellectual, and heartbreaking. It is a reminder that the best art about life is rarely about the highlights; it is about the long, strange, inevitable stretch in between. If you have leads on the current exhibition schedule for Larry Rivers’ late works, or if you are looking to authenticate a study for "Growing," contact the Larry Rivers Estate.
Look closely at the brushwork. In the 1950s, Rivers had a lush, almost de Kooning-esque touch. By 1981, that touch has turned aggressive and dry. There are sections of Growing where the paint seems scraped off rather than applied. There are areas of raw, unpainted canvas—gaps in the "growth." This formal decision suggests that growing is not a smooth process; it is full of holes, erasures, and false starts.