Catching up to this piece in The Wall Street Journal yesterday.
A mural — 12 feet high and 22 feet long — is free to whoever can extract it from the Forth Avenue loft where the late Barney Rosset created it.
Rosset, owner of the publishing house Grove Press, died in February 2012 at age 89. His widow, Astrid Myers Rosset, 83, is moving to her East Hampton home, and there isn't room for the mural out east.
Some excerpts from the article:
A few years before his death, Mr. Rosset took a paintbrush to their living-room wall and, with characteristic zeal, poured himself into chronicling his picaresque life in a swath of primary colors dotted with dioramas the size of jewel boxes.
Mr. Rosset worked feverishly on the mural, using a stepladder to paint sections near the ceiling. When he no longer felt safe climbing the ladder, he reached high-up spots by wielding a paintbrush taped to a pool cue or cane.
“He would stand in front of that wall for hours,” Ms. Rosset said. “And it was always changing.”
As we first noted back in March, the building where Ms. Rosset lives with the mural at 61 Fourth Ave. is for sale. The asking price for the 6-floor building between East Ninth Street and East 10th Street is $15.5 million.
Previously on EV Grieve:
Condo conversion one possibility for 61 4th Avenue, now on the market for $15.5 million
I worked for Barney Rosset when Grove Press was on 11th St near University Place in the 1970s. What am amazing work place and great guy he was, usually downstairs at the Black Bar, which was his. I certainly wish I had a place for the mural, they should give it to a museum.
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