Richard Mayhew: A Life in Art

Richard Mayhew: A Life in Art

January 21 through February 15, 2025

ACA Galleries

173 Tenth Avenue, New York

Opening Reception Thursday, January 23rd from 6 to 8PM

New York, NY…ACA Galleries is delighted to present a solo exhibition of Richard Mayhew’s transcendent landscapes. Richard Mayhew: A Life in Art will provide a retrospective-style survey of his signature oil paintings and watercolors, in celebration of the life and work of the artist, who recently passed away at the age of 100.

ACA Galleries represented Richard Mayhew for over thirty years. In 2020, the gallery organized a major exhibition of paintings and watercolors which was accompanied by the first and only comprehensive monograph of the artist’s work, Transcendence (2020, Chronicle Books, San Francisco) with an essay by Andrew Walker, director of the Amon Carter Museum of American Art. A Life in Art will feature key works—many from private collections and rarely exhibited together—covering the most defining decades of Mayhew’s practice.

Widely recognized as one of America’s most important contemporary landscape painters, Mayhew’s luminous, emotionally-charged abstract paintings—which he referred to as ‘mindscapes’—have been the subject of more than forty solo exhibitions over the last fifty years. For Mayhew, the essence of reality was more important than its facts. His paintings were not mere representations of landscapes but transcendent reflections of the emotional and spiritual connections he felt towards the natural world.

Richard Mayhew was born 1924 in Amityville, New York to parents of African-American and Native American ancestry. He began drawing and painting at an early age, a passion sparked by watching the artists who summered on Long Island’s south shore paint its scenic shorelines. During his formative years, his maternal grandmother imparted knowledge regarding their Native American ancestry and folklore, which instilled in him a lifelong reverence for nature.

In 1945, Mayhew moved to New York City and attended the Brooklyn Museum of Art’s School and Art Students League, where he studied with Reuben Tam, Edwin Dickinson, Hans Hofmann and Max Beckmann. His first solo exhibition was at the Brooklyn Museum of Art in 1955. In 1958, Mayhew was awarded the John Hay Whitney Foundation Grant which enabled him to travel to Europe in 1959 to continue his studies.

When he returned to New York in 1963 following his travels, he joined Spiral, an organization of African-American artists and intellectuals committed to promoting civil rights in the art world formed by Romare Bearden, Charles Alston, Norman Lewis, Felrath Hines and Hale Woodruff, to discuss the role of African American artists in the political and cultural landscape of America. Last Fall, ACA Galleries was pleased to present Beyond the Spiral, an exhibition featuring Mayhew’s work alongside other artists from the legendary Spiral Group. Mayhew was the last surviving member of the group at the time of his passing.

Mayhew’s work is in the permanent collections of numerous museums including: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, NY; Whitney Museum of American Art, NY; Brooklyn Museum of Art, NY; Art Institute of Chicago; IL; National Museum of American Art, DC; Los Angeles County Museum of Art, CA; and the De Young Museum; CA.  He was a member of the National Academy of Design and was also widely recognized for his work as an educator with teaching positions at the Art Students League, Hunter College, and Pennsylvania State University, among others. ACA Galleries represented Richard Mayhew from 1996-2024.