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David Anfam, Art Historian Who Rewrote the History of Abstract Expressionism, Dies at 69
David Anfam, an art historian and curator whose scholarship on Abstract Expressionism added new chapters to the movement’s history, died in London on Wednesday, sources close to him told ARTnews. He was 69.

Anfam’s rigorous, in-depth studies on Abstract Expressionism have been roundly praised. His 1998 catalogue raisonné of Mark Rothko’s paintings, a 1,000-page tome that critic John Russell once labeled “a book for all seasons,” is a core text for scholars of the movement. His 2016 Abstract Expressionism survey for London’s Royal Academy of Arts was called “the most pleasurable, provocative exhibition of American art in Britain this century” by the Financial Times’s Jackie Wullschläger

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