Men in the Cities (Larry), 1983

Robert Longo is one of the defining American artists to emerge from New York’s Pictures Generation in the late 1970s and early 1980s. Working across drawing, photography, printmaking, sculpture, film, and music, Longo developed a distinctive visual language centered on power, movement, violence, and the imagery of contemporary culture. His celebrated *Men in the Cities* series became the defining body of work of his early career, depicting sharply dressed men and women caught in dramatic, contorted poses against stark white backgrounds. Suspended somewhere between dancing, falling, and recoiling from an unseen force, these figures capture the energy, ambition, and underlying anxiety of urban life in the 1980s. The series remains Longo’s most recognizable body of work and is represented in major museum collections, including the Museum of Modern Art and the Whitney Museum of American Art.

*Larry*, 1983, is a monumental and particularly striking image from the *Men in the Cities* series, depicting the influential art dealer Larry Gagosian as its subject. Dressed in a dark suit, the figure is captured in a dramatic backward movement, his body seemingly frozen at the instant between control and collapse. At six feet tall, the work transforms an ordinary human gesture into something imposing and cinematic, while Longo’s stark black-and-white treatment strips away context and leaves the viewer to determine whether the figure is dancing, falling, or reacting to an unseen impact. Executed as an original lithograph on Arches paper, *Larry* was published by Editions Schellmann in 1983 in a small edition of 48, with additional artist’s proofs. Measuring an impressive 72 × 36 inches (183 × 91.5 cm), the work is hand-signed, dated, and numbered in pencil.