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ALLAN KAPROW, 1927-2006
Allan Kaprow, 78, painter and assemblage artist who invented the Happening, died peacefully at his home in Encinitas, Ca., on Apr. 5. A student of Hans Hofmann, Kaprow co-founded the co-op Hansa Gallery on East 10th Street in Manhattan in 1952, where he showed his early "action-collage" paintings including all kinds of raw materials as well as flashing lights. By 1957-58 he had begun making total environments that "pointed the way to a new form of art in which action would predominate over painting." The first Happening, titled 18 Happenings in 6 Parts, took place in October 1959 at the Reuben Gallery on Fourth Avenue. He filled the courtyard of the Martha Jackson Gallery with used tires for Yard in 1961, and for the 1963 exhibition "Hans Hofmann and His Students" at the Museum of Modern Art, he installed two furnished rooms that could be rearranged by visitors. He had major survey exhibitions at the Pasadena Art Museum (1967), the Bremen Kunst Museum (1976), Fondazione Mudima in Milan (1991), Galerie Donguy in Paris (1992) and the John Gibson Gallery in New York (1995). He was professor emeritus at the University of California San Diego.