Richard Shapiro and the urge to make art

The urge to be creative is a basis of human existence. Certain individuals are of a persistent drive, a need to be an artist. Some approach art to make others strategically, others spontaneously, others with great foresight, consideration and planning. Regardless of how or why, this trip continues to surprise me.

That takes me to Richard Shapiro, an artist that I recently visited in Los Angeles. Shapiros Professional Odyssee comprised several successful detours: as the owner and operator of more than 30 budget-rent-a-car offices, as the founder of the Grill Restaurant in Beverly Hills, the owner of Richard Shapiro Studio, a home offer and an interior design. Moca) and yes, as an artist.

Shapiro’s work looks like paintings (and they are), but instead of applying color directly on canvas, he uses polyethylene plans that he paints and manipulated as they make them 3D, and reminds of the works of Frank Stella or Elizabeth Murray and sometimes Georges Braque. But his work remains unique.

Shapiro was born in Minneapolis, and at the age of five his family moved to Los Angeles (Burank, then Encino). His early art was with his parents. As a family, they often went to the Monday Open Gallery Night on La Cienega Boulevard. He also took oil painter lessons as a child. In view of the fact that he came from a family of doctors, he went to college and thought he would follow this way. Life has proven something else.

Pre-Med was not for him. Instead, he decided to work with a close friend to seek a business option. The grandfather of his partner knew Morris Mirkin, the founder of the Budget-Rent-A-Car, based in Los Angeles. Over time, they bought a single franchise in 1965. They expanded over time. And in 1984 he decided to found a restaurant The Grill in an alley, just a few steps from Wilshire and Rodeo Drive. It was an immediate success.

Shapiro was married and had a daughter. In his early twenties, Shapiro had joined a Lacma Museum Group who visited collectors. “I remember that I was only really beaten by seeing private homes and seeing private collections,” said Shapiro. “And I really felt like I was getting collector.”

He began to visit galleries in which he often did not get the warmest treatment. In the Herbert Palmer Gallery, Palmer’s daughter Meredith, who had a degree in art history from Harvard and was a brilliant dealer, took over him. She brought him to the first La Art Fair and introduced him to an Kurt -Schwitter -Collage with Annely Juda, the London gallery owner, from whom he bought his first great work of art.

Shapiro started everything about art and the artists who did the work. “I was a real student and read everything I could and I really understood that you have to buy the best examples of these artists.”

His collection grew into a Robert Rauschenberg combine, a Frank Stella needle strip -painting, sculptures by George Segal, Carl Andre, Joel Shapiro, Tony Smith, Gerhard Richter and Donald Judd.

As a prominent art collector, he became a trustee at Moca accompanied by Top Contemporary Art Collectors such as Eli Broad and Cliff Einstein.

In 1992 Shapiro sold his budget pension a-car business, which had grown on more than 30 offices with around 5000 cars and trucks.

In the nineties, Shapiro decided to become an artist himself. He had experienced success in his various efforts and had clear ideas about the art he wanted to do.

“For about three years I really thought that with all the knowledge I have accumulated as a collector, and I am a creative person, so I really had the feeling that I should try to be an artist in a serious way.” He built a large studio on the property of his house.

Shapiro did great work on painters with acrylic, oils, graphite, house color, booklings, all on board, in a way reminiscent of work by Rauchberg and influenced by Arte Povera, in which the stencils of artists such as Twombly, Judd and Judd, from whose work, wanted to break from work. Shapiro brought his portfolio to the Tasende Gallery in Los Angeles, which gave him two shows. Shapiro thought he was a success.

However, Shapiro soon recorded financial reversal. He had divorced and when the first Dot.com Bust brought him serious stock market losses, he prompted the following financial instability to sell his art collection, which most went to museums. He also stopped doing art.

Shapiro’s own home, minutes from the center of Westwood, is an Italian villa that he decorated with a mixture of Italian antiques and modern art with an elaborate garden that was inspired by one in Bordeaux. His home and his gardens are the subject of a Rizzoli coffee book, Past perfect Richard Shapiro House and Gardens).

People started looking for him to decorate their houses. Sometimes he made entire houses, sometimes he only consulted. He did this without training without a degree without training. Sometimes the customers weren’t happy. “I wanted to do what I wanted to do instead of what they wanted.” But the shop was successful.

When the landlord wanted to triple the rent, he closed the studio. “But I was really looking for myself to get back in.” So he found a room on La Cienega, i.e. by chance, the former location of Herbert Palmer Gallery, which he ran until he closed it during the covid.

About four years ago, he decided during pandemic to return to art in his studio. He devotes his days of his art again. He returned to the use of tarps, but not the planning of the painter, which he previously used. Instead, he now uses polyethylene markets that he turns into works that are three -dimensional and that Shapiro calls “topographies”.

The tarpaulins are sent and manipulated in a way that looks almost like a Stella painting. Others play with ideas from cubism and deconstruct the organization and direction of the tarps. In working with Tarps, Shapiro states: “I like the idea of ​​having a language that is original and fresh.”

His most recent exhibition in the Rhett Baruch Gallery in Los Angeles was a confirmation of his current path. He is now in the studio all day.

“It is for me,” said Shapiro. “I’m 82 and this is my last chapter: I will not be a collector. I will not be a businessman. I love that.”