In Memoriam This week, we honor a fixture of New York and New Delhi art, a painter who folded the world into abstraction, and a champion of Denver’s scene.

October 21, 2026 — 2 min read

Peter Nagy in Mysuru, India, 1993 (photo courtesy Magenta Plains)

In Memoriam honors those we recently lost in the art world.

Peter Nagy (1959–2026)

Artist and gallerist who shaped art scenes in New York and New Delhi

He co-founded the East Village gallery Nature Morte in 1982, one of the earliest artist-run galleries in the neighborhood, which showed artists such as Louise Lawler, Gretchen Bender, and Keith Sonnier during its six-year run. He fell in love with India and its art in 1992, reopening Nature Morte in New Delhi five years later, helping to build the city's gallery system. In 2016, he co-founded the influential Lower East Side gallery Magenta Plains.

An accomplished artist in his own right, his post-conceptualist work merged painting with photocopy technology.…