Eleanor Ray

NLE Lab Gathering Place

“Paintings of the New York Studio School and Greenwich Village” , (2012)
Oil on Panel
Dimensions variable

Painted by Eleanor Ray during her time at the New York Studio School (NYSS), this collection draws parallels between West Village artists past and present. NYSS was founded by Hans Hoffman in the early 1960s, several years after he closed his famous 8th Street School.

The school moved to its current location at 8 West 8th Street the original site of the Whitney Museum, in 1967. Ray depicts the school’s hallways, mailroom, and windows, as well as her private studio space, the “Guston Kitchen,” once part of an apartment provided for visiting artists such as Philip Guston. Ray also depicts her prewar apartment on 10th Street, the former location of Willem de Kooning’s studio. The paintings’ simplified forms render them devoid of commercial and cultural references to any specific time-period, while “hinting at the secret past of these places.”