Larry Rivers (1923-2002) was an American artist, musician, filmmaker, and occasional actor. He is considered by many scholars to be the ''Godfather'' of Pop art, because he was one of the first artists to merge non-objective, non-narrative art with narrative and objective abstraction. Rivers took up painting in 1945 and studied at the Hans Hofmann School during 1947-48. He earned a BA in art education from New York University in 1951. A pop artist of the New York School, Rivers reproduced everyday objects of American popular culture as art. He was one of eleven New York artists featured in the opening exhibition at the Terrain Gallery in 1955. In 2002 a major retrospective of Rivers' work was held at the Corcoran Gallery of Art in Washington, DC.