The late denyse thomasos, a star of the latest whitney biennial, lives

The late artist Denyse Thomasos at work in her studio. Most of the paintings in the memorial at Olga Korper Gallery which starts Nov. Presiding over the wedding was Father Daniel Donovan.

One of the stars of

Actually, they had been married at City Hall in New York the previous year, and had adopted a baby girl, Syann, just a few weeks before their second wedding. Sadly, almost two years later almost to the day, on July 19, , the healthy year-old Thomasos went to a private clinic in Manhattan to get an MRI — she thought she might have a genetic condition.

When the nurse injected the gadolinium, used to obtain clearer MRI images, Thomasos developed trouble breathing. She died of a rare allergic reaction on her way to the hospital. Father Donovan conducted a funeral mass for her at St. Denyse Thomasos was born in Trinidad, but the family fled violent political turmoil for Canada in Her father went to the University of Waterloo and got an MA in physics and started teaching high school.

The three Thomasos daughters grew up in a comfortable home at Lawrence Ave. Denyse went on to get an art history degree at the University of Toronto and a master of fine arts from Yale. Thomasos was aggressive and ambitious, and before the s were out, she had a Guggenheim Fellowship, a coveted professorship at Rutgers University and was represented by two blue-chip galleries: Lennon, Weinberg in New York, and the Olga Korper Gallery in Toronto.

A memorial celebration for Thomasos runs from Nov. Her paintings reflect her love of cities and travel, often incorporating elements from her trips to Africa and India. In Yves Blue , for instance, the scaffolding of a dense city block is rendered in fierce strokes of grey and green. In Arc , a structure that looks like an amusement-park ride careens across the canvas.