ROY NEWELL, ABSTRACT PAINTER, DIES AT NINETY-TWO

Roy Newell, a painter of geometric abstracts and one of the original members of the Abstract Expressionists, has died at age ninety-two of cancer, reports the New York Times‘ Benjamin Genocchio. Though quietly admired by critics and peers, Newell remained outside of the art-world mainstream. He was a slow, episodic worker, showing seldom in a career of almost seventy years; his total output is believed to have been fewer than one hundred paintings. In the early 1940s, a chance meeting with Willem de Kooning drew Newell into the Abstract Expressionists’ circle. He was later a founding member of the Eighth Street Artists’ Club, an early gathering of a number of notable artists associated with the New York School, like de Kooning, Arshile Gorky, Franz Kline, and Phillip Pavia.