LLR Archive Research

We are searching for previous owners of artwork by LLR for our archive. Artwork primarily sold in the late 1970s through 1987 in New Jersey and New York City. Ellen Sragow was his art dealer in New York City in the mid 1980s. If you own a painting by LLR or have info on some of his paintings please contact us. Thank you.

Blog 2 – Packing Up a Lifetime of Art

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Family members loading art onto a 17 foot U-Haul truck

The process of clearing out a loved one’s house, who has passed away, is an overwhelming process. My brother had written specific instructions on how he advised I should handle his extensive baseball postcard collection. But he did not mention anything about his art. Not one written word! Two pages about his collections, nothing about the Art.

Imagine a garage completely full of 3 foot by 4 foot and larger paintings, most wrapped in plastic for two decades. Walk up to the attic more paintings, a bedroom with paintings and of course his basement art studio held stored paintings. I counted 484 but as we moved them I realized some had two or three between them that I had never seen! Could it be possible my brother had painted over 500 paintings in his lifetime? The answer was yes.

We rented a dumpster. I, a former dumpster diver, along with my husband Bruce were on a mission to clean out all four stories of my childhood house one room at a time. While cleaning in an upstairs bedroom on October 31st with my daughter Faith she said “mom, look at this!” Iit was a postcard invitation to an art show at Sragow Gallery In New York City Sept 26 – November 1 , 1987 featuring Lewis Rudolph Paintings.

We were not in Lewis present bedroom but an old upstairs bedroom taking things to the dumpster. After finding the post card we became more careful & focused on what we were sorting through and started an ”Art File Box” . I found invitations to other Art Exhibits featuring my brother’s artwork ; Soho Center for Visual Arts, Tweed-the gallery, Plainfield NJ I found Lewis’s typed resume/ bibliography and a letter from England sharing interest in Lewis abstract art. Why did I not know about Lewis’s art exhibits? Was I so wrapped up with my own young family and my nursing career years ago that Lewis did not share his successes with Bruce and I ? How did I not know?

I knew my brother painted full time having won a grant in the 1980’s. I knew he lived with our parents who loved having his companionship. As they aged and he assumed more responsibility for their care, Lewis seemed happy that caring for them gave him more time to paint. I know he hoped to break into the art scene but then in the 1990’s he stopped traveling to New York and simply painted.

In the upstairs bedroom we found newspaper articles and most of the documentation Lewis had saved over the course of his art career when it was public. I brought everything home to Pennsylvania with me and have referred to what Lewis saved to create a timeline of his career as an abstract artist. His paintings filled a 17 foot truck. We brought them back to Pennsylvania with no plan of what to do with them.

What would anyone else do if they found themselves responsible for a loved one’s life’s work of art? I thought about it a lot. I began speaking to others too. Where could I find an open door to reintroduce my Brother Lewis’s art?


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