60

Geoffrey Holder

(1930-2014)

Carmen.

Oil on masonite board, circa 1960.
Signed in oil, upper left recto. Signed in ink, verso on the cross brace.
47 1/2 x 36 in. (120.7 x 91.4 cm.), Frame: 48 1/4 x 36 1/2 x 2.85 in. (122.6 x 92.7 x 7.2 cm.)

  • Provenance:
    Private collection, Boston, circa 1960s.
    By descent, private collection, Rhode Island.
  • Notes:
    Actress, choreographer, and dancer Carmen de Lavallade (1931-2025) was married to Geoffrey Holder until his death on October 5, 2014. She was born in Los Angeles, California, on March 6, 1931, to Creole parents from New Orleans, Louisiana. De Lavallade began studying pre-professional ballet with Melissa Blake at age 16. She then studied with Carmelita Maracci and the modern dance pioneer Lester Horton, performing with Mr. Horton's company. After dancing with Horton, she joined Alvin Ailey in 1954. Over the course of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, she was a major figure in the performing arts, cinema, and television, and eventually became a professor and a member of the Yale Repertory Theater.

    In 2004, de Lavallade received the Black History Month Lifetime Achievement Award and the Capezio Dance Award in 2007. She also received an honorary Doctor of Fine Arts degree from the State University of New York at Purchase College in 2006 and from the Juilliard School in 2008. In December 2017, she received the Kennedy Center Honors Award.

    Geoffrey Holder was born in Trinidad in 1930 and moved to New York City in 1952 after being invited to teach choreography at the Katherine Dunham School of Dance. By 1954, he had his first successful one-man show in New York at the Barone Gallery and won a Guggenheim Fellowship in Fine Arts in 1956. Despite his talent as a painter, Holder is best known as an actor and dancer. He was a principal dancer with the Metropolitan Opera Ballet from 1955-56. He also had many roles as an actor and was featured in such movies as Doctor Dolittle (1967), Live and Let Die (1973), and 7 Up commercials. He was also a costume designer for Prodigal Prince (1967), The Wizard of Oz (1975), and Firebird (1982). His artwork has been exhibited at the Studio Museum in Harlem, the Corcoran Gallery of Art in Washington, DC, the Museum of the City of New York, the Nasher Museum of Art at Duke University, and the Barbados Museum.
  • Condition:
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April 2, 2026 12:00 PM EDT
New York, NY, US

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