Haywood Bill Rivers

In collaboration with the Sam Francis Foundation, we are pleased to look at the archival connections between Haywood Bill Rivers and Sam Francis.

Sam, Muriel, Bill and Betty shared the rent on a house at 21, Rue des Châtres-Sacs, Sèvres on the Southwestern outskirts of Paris.

“Francis and Muriel use the large ground-floor room, while the Rivers live on the first floor. The home is designed for summer living only, so they suffer a cold, damp winter without heat. Muriel later recalls: ‘We had mold growing in our shoes overnight.’” (Burchett-Lere, p. 156)

Not only was Francis a friend, he was godfather to the Rivers’ first child Cézanne.

Muriel Goodwin, also an artist, was a lifelong friend to Bill, his first wife Betty and their two children Cézanne and Maya. Letters between Muriel and the Rivers are housed in the Rivers papers at the Archives of American Art. They talk of artmaking, their lives as artists and their shared interest in the Dilexi Gallery in San Francisco. Rivers worked with Jim Newman at the gallery where Goodwin also exhibited.

Galerie Huit was a collective gallery formed by a group of artists in Paris in 1950. Haywood Rivers was voted by the collective to direct the gallery. Many say because of his capablity, kindness and ability to diffuse arguments. (Studio 18 Gallery, pp. 3-5)

“…located at 8, rue Saint Julien le Pauvre, across the river from Notre Dame cathedral. The former studio space of the sculptor Robert Rosenwald, the gallery primarily showcases young American artists, with exhibitions rotating every two weeks. Francis shows some works there, as do Muriel and Francis’s friends Simon Hantaï, Shirley Jaffe, Al Held, Jules Olitski, and others. Altogether, more than fifty artists will exhibit at Galerie Huit during its two-year existence, and it gains a reputation as an exciting place to see new work.” (Burchett-Lere, p. 156)

The connections between the group of artists in Paris is further illustrated at an exhibition and publication; “Americans in Paris” at NYU’s Grey Art Museum. The catalog is an in-depth look at a huge community of artists in Paris durung these years.

Rivers moved from France to New York to San Francisco and returned to Europe again. This movement and desire to live in multiple places was also something he and Sam Francis had in common.

Correspondence between Francis and Rivers has not yet been seen later than the 1950s. But in the Sam Francis Papers housed at the Getty Research Insitute a signed guest book from André Emmerich Gallery in New York from 1989, shows Haywood Rivers came to see Francis’s exhibit.