RUDOLF DE CRIGNIS, CRAIG HUGH SMYTH DIE

Rudolf de Crignis, a New York abstract painter, died at age fifty-eight on December 23 in Manhattan, reports the New York Times‘ Roberta Smith. The cause was an inoperable brain tumor, diagnosed in November, said his partner, Michael Paoletta. De Crignis was born in Winterthur, Switzerland, and studied at the Form + Farbe School for Art and Media Design in Zurich and the Academy of Fine Arts in Hamburg, Germany. He began his artistic career as a performance and video artist but shifted to painting in the late ’70s or early ’80s during a visit to New York.

Roja Heydarpour, also reporting for the New York Times, notes the passing of Craig Hugh Smyth, an art historian who drew attention to the importance of conservation and the recovery of purloined art and cultural objects. He died on December 22 in Englewood, New Jersey, at age ninety-one. Smyth led the first academic program in conservation in the United States in 1960 as the director of the Institute of Fine Arts at New York University.