Michael Combs - Sculpture

by Klaus Kertess

9X12 - 80 page, full color, hard cover book featuring a twenty-year survey of works by sculptor, Michael Combs. Foreword by Klaus Kertess. Interview with the artist by Terrie Sultan, Director of The Parrish Art Museum, Southampton, NY. Eight Short Takes on the Artist by Max Blagg. Essay on The Trophy Room by Amei Wallach. The Clothes Make the Man by Dr. Alicia Longwell. Published by The Grenfell Press, New York.

80 pages, Hardcover

Published January 1, 2016

About the author

Klaus Kertess was an American art gallerist, art critic and curator (including of the 1995 Whitney Biennial). He grew up in Westchester County north of New York City, the second of three children. After graduating from Phillips Academy, he studied art history at Yale University and in 1966 founded the Bykert Gallery with his college roommate Jeff Byers. The gallery name was formed from a compound of both of theirs. At Bykert he showed a roster of artists which included; Brice Marden, David Novros, Barry Le Va, Alan Saret, Chuck Close, Bill Bollinger, Dorothea Rockburne, and many others.
Later as an independent curator he oversaw the 1995 edition of the Whitney Biennial. Then in 1998 he curated the exhibition DeKooning: Drawing/Seeing at the Drawing Center also in New York City.
Kertess suffered from Alzheimer's and died on October 8, 2016, after collapsing at his apartment. He was 76. He is survived by his longtime partner, the painter Billy Sullivan.