British art historian and renowned curator David Anfam died at the age of 69 in London last Wednesday, August 21, as confirmed by the Clyfford Still Museum in Denver, Colorado. Best known for his scholarship on Abstract Expressionism, Anfam lives on through his legacy in exhibitions and publications such as his celebrated catalogue raisonné of Mark Rothko’s paintings.
Born in 1955, Anfam attended the Courtauld Institute of Art in London, where he received a Bachelor’s degree in Art History and was admitted straight into the PhD program under the guidance and tutelage of art historian John Golding. Per Golding’s suggestion, Anfam focused his dissertation on Clyfford Still, one of the credited pioneers of Abstract Expressionism who notoriously withdrew from the art market in order to exert total control over his creative vision.
Though he was never able to meet Still in person, Anfam was devoutly committed to the artist, eventually becoming the senior consulting curator for the Denver museum dedicated to Still’s estate upon its 2011 opening after joining the project in 2007.
Hyperallergic critic John Yau, a longtime friend of Anfam, said that the late historian “started with no theories, and got all of his information from talking to people who knew the artist, from looking at the artist’s work, from reading anything and everything he could find written by the artist.”
Yau specifically remembered an instance in which the late art historian physically copied one of Still’s essays on Paul Cezanne held in the Archives of American Art by hand on file cards, since copying via Xerox wasn’t permitted at the time.
“In this, he was full of love and generosity,” Yau told Hyperallergic.
In 1998, Anfam published his field-changing Rothko catalogue raisonné with Yale University Press. Nine years in the making and featuring over 830 known paintings by Rothko (400 of which had little to no previous recognition) as well as a 100-page introduction, Anfam’s publication swept the Mitchell Prize for the History of Art in 2000 amid boundless accolades for its fresh take and informed contextualization of Rothko’s work, life, and surrounding influences. Anfam went on to produce a catalogue raisonné for British artist Anish Kapoor in 2009, published by Phaidon Press.
He is also well-remembered for his first published work, Abstract Expressionism (1990), considered a powerful foray into the editorial scape for condensing a profoundly complex art movement into an approachable and introductory text. In addition to authoring his own books, Anfam has contributed catalogue essays for dozens of artists, including Wayne Thiebaud, Willem de Kooning, Arshile Gorky, Philip Guston, Edward Hopper, Franz Kline, Lee Krasner, Joan Mitchell, Jackson Pollock, Larry Poons, Richard Pousette-Dart, Robert Rauschenberg, and Ad Reinhardt, among others. The late historian also contributed to Hyperallergic, with a 2020 review of Cézanne: The Rock and Quarry Paintings at the Princeton University Art Museum.
Beyond the written word, Anfam was a public and academic lecturer, as well as an esteemed curator. Notable exhibitions developed under Anfam include Mark Rothko: The Chapel Commission in Houston in 1996, Bill Viola: Ocean Without a Shore (2007) at the 52nd Venice Biennale, Abstract Expressionism at London’s Royal Academy of Arts between 2016 and 2017, and Lynda Benglis: In the Realm of the Senses in Athens between 2019 and 2020.
Yau underscored that Anfam’s legacy is not just his original writing about and devotion to Clyfford Still, but also his texts “about little-known and lesser-known figures, as well as neglected contemporaries.”
“He had an enormous appetite and always brought the same high standard of care and commitment to everyone whose work he wrote about,” Yau concluded.
