Terrence Rogers, 52; Gallery Owner Focused on Still Lifes, Landscapes

Terrence Rogers, 52, an art gallery owner who focused on contemporary observation-based painting and drawing, including still lifes and landscapes, died Friday at UCLA Santa Monica Hospital of complications from a stroke.

Rogers studied at the California College of Arts and Crafts in Oakland and the School of Visual Art in New York City before joining the Tatistcheff Gallery in New York in 1980.

Seven years later, he established the gallery’s West Coast offshoot, the Tatistcheff/Rogers Gallery, in Santa Monica. Rogers became an expert on painters’ problems with the ever-developing area and staged a special exhibition to illustrate the situation, “Le Gusta Esta Jardin?: Development and the California Landscape,” in 1992.

He was a founding member of the Santa Monica-Venice Art Dealers Assn. and helped launch the first Los Angeles International, which brought foreign artists and galleries to the local art scene.

Rogers closed his gallery in 1997, after informing clients that he had suffered health problems from AIDS and kidney disease. He later opened Rogers Fine Art.