Bellamy, Richard (Richard John)

Art dealer; New York, N.Y.; b. 1927, Cincinnati, Ohio; d. 1998, New York, N.Y.

Richard Bellamy (1927-1998) was an art dealer from New York, N.Y.

Epithet: singer and composer

B. 1927 d. 1998.

Art dealer; New York, N.Y. Born 1927. Died 1998.

Richard Hu Townley Bellamy was born in Cincinnati, December 3, 1927, the son of doctors. At the age of 21, after dropping out of college, he moved to Provincetown, Massachusetts. There, while working at various jobs including selling antiques and house painting, he became friends with numerous artists of the Hans Hofmann school.

Bellamy moved to New York in the early 1950s and continued his association with the Hofmann students, a group of whom opened the Hansa Gallery in 1952. Originally located on East 12th Street, Hansa was one of the first cooperative galleries in New York and one of many spaces devoted to displaying works of young artists attempting to define themselves apart from Abstract Expressionism, then the dominant style and the focus of major uptown galleries. By 1955, Bellamy was named director of the Hansa, the gallery had relocated to 210 Central Park South, and it was attracting significant attention from art world figures such as Hans Richter, Clement Greenberg, and Meyer Shapiro. The gallery's members included Jan Müller, Richard Stankiewicz, Allan Kaprow (who staged some of his first environments there), Miles Forst, Wolf Kahn, Jane Wilson, and others, and it held exhibitions of works by Alfred Leslie, John Chamberlain, George Segal, Myron Stout, and Lucas Samaras. Despite the eventual critical and commercial success of many of these artists, the Hansa was never financially viable and it closed in 1959.

In 1960, with the unpublicized financial backing of Robert Scull, Bellamy opened the Green Gallery on West 57th Street. He selected and represented new and emerging artists providing first or second exhibitions for James Rosenquist, Claes Oldenburg, George Segal, Larry Poons, Robert Morris, Lucas Samaras, Donald Judd, Tom Wesselmann, Milet Andrejevic, and Dan Flavin. For a few years, the Green Gallery was considered the center of groundbreaking work in the New York art world, yet in 1964 Robert Scull withdrew his support and in 1965 the gallery closed.

From 1965 until 1974, Bellamy maintained a small office at the Noah Goldowsky Gallery where he acted as a private dealer but also organized shows in the gallery and shared many operational duties with Goldowsky. Between 1974 and 1980 he lived in and worked from a private gallery at 25th Street and Park Avenue. Finally, in 1980, Bellamy opened the Oil & Steel Gallery at 157 Chambers Street, though in 1985 the gallery moved to 30-40 Vernon Boulevard alongside the studios of Mark di Suvero and Alfred Leslie. The Oil & Steel Gallery focused on artists Bellamy had supported or been friends with for decades. They included Richard Nonas, Myron Stout, Neil Williams, David Rabinowitch, Peter Young, Walter de Maria, Michael Heizer, Miles Forst, and many others. Most prominent among these artists were Alfred Leslie and Mark di Suvero. In collaboration with the Barbara Flynn, Bellamy organized four major retrospective shows of Leslie's work at the Flynn Gallery between 1991 and 1992 and, over numerous decades, organized the sale, consignment, and loan of Leslie's works. Bellamy's relationship with Mark di Suvero was equally long standing, having spanned thirty-five years. Bellamy is credited with helping revive di Suvero's reputation in New York beginning with an exhibition held at Oil & Steel in 1983. In the 1990s, Bellamy began to devote most of his time to arranging large shows of di Suvero's work in Venice, Paris, and elsewhere in Europe, and also helped arrange di Suvero's joint representation by the Gagosian Gallery beginning in 1993. At the time of his death he was also involved in compiling a catalogue raisonné of di Suvero's work.

Bellamy was an enthusiastic photographer, notable for his sensitive and illuminating images of sculpture. An exhibition of his photographs of di Suvero sculpture was held at Storm King Art Center in 2006. He was also a founding member, in 1971, of P.S.1 Contemporary Art Center in Long Island City, New York, and served on advisory boards of numerous other organizations. Apart from his friendships with artists, Bellamy developed close relationships with the collectors and patrons Virginia Wright and Robert Scull, and numerous museum curators and directors and gallery owners. He is remembered by his extensive community of friends, artists, and by the New York art world, as a tireless correspondent, visionary, booster, and all around supporter of the arts. Richard Bellamy died in his sleep on Sunday, March 29, 1998, at the age of seventy.

A note on names: Close friends sometimes called Richard Bellamy "George," a nickname bestowed on him by his father (referred to in this scheme as "Lenny.") Not only does some correspondence carry the appellation, but Bellamy also used the name for credits of his photography (sometimes even using foreign versions of the name for publication in other countries). This should not be confused with occasional photographs credited to Peter Bellamy, a noted photographer of no relation to Richard.

Much of the above material was taken from various published obituaries as well as a biographical statement prepared by Miles Bellamy for Roberta Smith of The New York Times. See Series IV for those materials.