Photo by Anthony Lindsey from the documentary, "Anton: Circling Home"
Longtime East Village-based artist Anton van Dalen passed away in his home on June 25. He was 86.
P·P·O·W, the gallery that had represented him over the years, announced that he died of natural causes in his sleep.
Some background on his life and work:
Van Dalen was born in Amstelveen, Holland, in 1938 to a conservative Calvinist family during World War II. He began rearing pigeons at 12, seeking solace in the companionship of a community outside the instability around him.
Enraptured by the magic of their flight, van Dalen saw his own migration journey, from Holland to Canada and ultimately to the United States, reflected in the migratory nature of the birds.
After arriving in New York's Lower East Side in 1966, before ultimately settling in the East Village, van Dalen served as witness, storyteller, and documentarian of the dramatic cultural shifts in the neighborhood.
While active in the alternative art scene in the East Village during the 1980s, van Dalen began his career as a graphic designer. Working as a studio assistant to Saul Steinberg for over 30 years, van Dalen learned the stylization and design aesthetics that would ultimately ground the visual language he used to discuss the culture around him.
Van Dalen became known for his Night Street Drawings (1975–77), a monochrome series of graphite drawings documenting the surrounding Lower East Side with tenderness and empathy, including vignettes of car wrecks, sex workers, crumbling buildings, and more.
As poet and critic John Yau wrote, all of van Dalen's work arose "out of a meticulous draftsmanship in service of an idiosyncratic imagination merged with civic-mindedness."
Van Dalen lived at 166 Avenue A — the PEACE house — between 10th Street and 11th Street since 1971. He documented the changes there in this
post for EVG.
His flock of snow-white pigeons from his rooftop loft were a common site in the nearby skies. (
Photo from 2015 by Grant Shaffer.)
We had the great pleasure of meeting van Dalen several times, first over a dinner at Odessa. We appreciated his kind, thoughtful manner and deep affinity for the East Village. He shared several dispatches with us over the years (see the end of this post for a selection).
Van Dalen was especially upset about the 2013 demolition of the Mary Help of Christians church, school, and rectory on Avenue A between 11th Street and 12th Street, which made way for the block-long Steiner East Village condoplex.
He shared this photo and sketch for
a post in August 2013.
The neighborhood's transformation was a common theme in his work, as seen in his one-man performance piece "
Avenue A Cutout Theatre," which featured "a portable model of his house, which he uses as a staging ground for telling the story of the evolution of the East Village."
He first performed the Avenue A Cut-Out Theatre in 1995 at the University Settlement House on the Lower East Side. The performance has been shown at numerous institutions, including the Museum of Modern Art and The New York Historical Society.
As he wrote in
a post for EVG in October 2020:
I consider myself a documentarian of the East Village, yet I am a participant and spectator to its evolution. Began documenting my street surroundings in 1975, urged on by wanting to note and remember these lives. Came to realize I had to embrace wholeheartedly, with pencil in hand, my streets with its raw emotions.
Van Dalen is survived by his older brother, Leen van Dalen; his two children, Marinda and Jason; their spouses, René van Haaften and Ali Villagra; and three grandchildren, Cleo, Aster, and Diego.
P·P·O·W said that memorial service announcements will be forthcoming.
Previously on EV Grieve:
