Richard Joseph Anuszkiewicz (; May 23, 1930 – May 19, 2020) was an American

painter Painting is the practice of applying paint, pigment, color or other medium to a solid surface (called the "matrix" or "support"). The medium is commonly applied to the base with a brush, but other implements, such as knives, sponges, and ai ...

printmaker Printmaking is the process of creating work of art, artworks by printing, normally on paper, but also on fabric, wood, metal, and other surfaces. "Traditional printmaking" normally covers only the process of creating prints using a hand proce ...

, and

sculptor Sculpture is the branch of the visual arts that operates in three dimensions. Sculpture is the three-dimensional art work which is physically presented in the dimensions of height, width and depth. It is one of the plastic arts. Durable sc ...

Life and work

Anuszkiewicz was born in Erie, Pennsylvania, the son of Victoria (Jankowski) and Adam Anuszkiewicz, who worked in a paper mill. His parents were Polish immigrants. He first studied art under

Joseph Plavcan Joseph Michael Plavcan (July 19, 1908 – February 7, 1981) was an American painter and teacher from Erie, Pennsylvania. Early life Plavcan was born in Braddock, Pennsylvania, to Czechoslovakian immigrant parents. Soon after his birth his par ...

while still in high school, later describing him as his most significant influence. Anuszkiewicz trained at the

Cleveland Institute of Art The Cleveland Institute of Art, previously Cleveland School of Art, is a private college focused on art and design and located in Cleveland, Ohio. History The college was founded in 1882 as the Western Reserve School of Design for Women, at firs ...

Cleveland Cleveland ( ), officially the City of Cleveland, is a city in the U.S. state of Ohio and the county seat of Cuyahoga County. Located in the northeastern part of the state, it is situated along the southern shore of Lake Erie, across the U.S. ...

Ohio Ohio () is a state in the Midwestern region of the United States. Of the fifty U.S. states, it is the 34th-largest by area, and with a population of nearly 11.8 million, is the seventh-most populous and tenth-most densely populated. The sta ...

(1948–1953), and then with Josef Albers at the Yale University School of Art in

New Haven, Connecticut New Haven is a city in the U.S. state of Connecticut. It is located on New Haven Harbor on the northern shore of Long Island Sound in New Haven County, Connecticut and is part of the New York City metropolitan area. With a population of 134,02 ...

(1953–1955), where he earned his Masters of Fine Arts. He was one of the founders and foremost exponents of

Op Art Op art, short for optical art, is a style of visual art that uses optical illusions. Op artworks are abstract, with many better-known pieces created in black and white. Typically, they give the viewer the impression of movement, hidden images ...

, a movement during the late 1960s and early 1970s.''New York Times.'' December 15, 2000. By Holland Cotter, p. E41.

Victor Vasarely Victor Vasarely (; born Győző Vásárhelyi, ; 9 April 1906 – 15 March 1997) was a Hungarian-French artist, who is widely accepted as a "grandfather" and leader of the Op art movement. His work entitled ''Zebra'', created in 1937, is consi ...

in France and Bridget Riley in England were his primary international counterparts. In 1964, ''

Life Life is a quality that distinguishes matter that has biological processes, such as signaling and self-sustaining processes, from that which does not, and is defined by the capacity for growth, reaction to stimuli, metabolism, energ ...

'' magazine called him "one of the new wizards of Op". While reflecting on a New York City gallery show of Anuszkiewicz's from 2000, ''

New York Times ''The New York Times'' (''the Times'', ''NYT'', or the Gray Lady) is a daily newspaper based in New York City with a worldwide readership reported in 2020 to comprise a declining 840,000 paid print subscribers, and a growing 6 million paid d ...

'' art critic

Holland Cotter Holland Cotter is an art critic with ''The New York Times''. In 2009, he won the Pulitzer Prize for Criticism. Life and work Cotter was born in Connecticut and grew up in Boston, Massachusetts. He earned his A.B. from Harvard College in 1970, wh ...

described Anuszkiewicz's paintings: "The drama — and that feels like the right word — is in the subtle chemistry of complementary colors, which makes the

geometry Geometry (; ) is, with arithmetic, one of the oldest branches of mathematics. It is concerned with properties of space such as the distance, shape, size, and relative position of figures. A mathematician who works in the field of geometry is c ...

glow as if light were leaking out from behind it." Anuszkiewicz exhibited at the

Venice Biennale The Venice Biennale (; it, La Biennale di Venezia) is an international cultural exhibition hosted annually in Venice, Italy by the Biennale Foundation. The biennale has been organised every year since 1895, which makes it the oldest of ...

, Florence Biennale and

Documenta ''documenta'' is an exhibition of contemporary art which takes place every five years in Kassel, Germany. The ''documenta'' was founded by artist, teacher and curator Arnold Bode in 1955 as part of the Bundesgartenschau (Federal Horticultura ...

, and his works are in permanent collections internationally. He was elected into the

National Academy of Design The National Academy of Design is an honorary association of American artists, founded in New York City in 1825 by Samuel Morse, Asher Durand, Thomas Cole, Martin E. Thompson, Charles Cushing Wright, Ithiel Town, and others "to promote the fin ...

in 1992 as an Associate member, and became a full member in 1994.

Style

Anuszkiewicz was concerned with the optical changes that occur when different high-intensity colors are applied to the same geometric configurations. Most of his work comprises visual investigations of formal structural and color effects, many of them nested square forms similar to the work of his mentor Josef Albers. In his series, "Homage to the Square", Albers experimented with juxtapositions of color, and Anuszkiewicz developed these concepts further. Anuszkiewicz continued to produce works in the Op Art style over the subsequent decades of his career. In 1963, Anuszkiewicz summarized his approach to painting as: "My work is of an experimental nature and has centered on an investigation into the effects of complementary colors of full intensity when juxtaposed and the optical changes that occur as a result, and a study of the dynamic effect of the whole under changing conditions of light, and the effect of light on color."

Selected collections holding works

Akron Art Museum The Akron Art Museum is an art museum in Akron, Ohio, United States. The museum first opened on February 1, 1922, as the Akron Art Institute. It was located in two borrowed rooms in the basement of the public library. The Institute offered clas ...

, Akron, Ohio * Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo *

Art Institute of Chicago The Art Institute of Chicago in Chicago's Grant Park, founded in 1879, is one of the oldest and largest art museums in the world. Recognized for its curatorial efforts and popularity among visitors, the museum hosts approximately 1.5 mill ...

Blanton Museum of Art The Jack S. Blanton Museum of Art (often referred to as the Blanton or the BMA) at the University of Texas at Austin is one of the largest university art museums in the U.S. with 189,340 square feet devoted to temporary exhibitions, permanent coll ...

, University of Texas * Boca Raton Museum of Art *

Carnegie Museum of Art The Carnegie Museum of Art, is an art museum in the Oakland neighborhood of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Originally known as the Department of Fine Arts, Carnegie Institute and was at what is now the Main Branch of the Carnegie Library of Pittsbur ...

, Pittsburgh * Chicago Museum of Contemporary Art * Cleveland Museum of Art * Columbus Museum of Art * Denver Art Museum * Detroit Institute of Arts *

Flint Institute of Arts The Flint Institute of Arts, also called FIA, is located in the Flint Cultural Center in Flint, Michigan. The second largest art museum in Michigan, it offers exhibitions, interpretive programs, film screenings, concerts, lectures, family events ...

* Fogg Museum, Harvard University * The Governor Nelson A. Rockefeller Empire State Plaza Art Collection *

Hokkaido Museum of Modern Art The opened in Sapporo, Hokkaidō, Japan in 1977. The collection includes works by Jules Pascin and the École de Paris as well as by modern Japanese artists, in particular those with a connection to Hokkaidō. There are five related prefectur ...

* Honolulu Museum of ArtHonolulu Museum of Art wall label, ''Sol V'', 1968, acrylic on canvas, accession 3546.1 *

Indiana University Art Museum The Eskenazi Museum of Art at Indiana University opened in 1941 under the direction of Henry Radford Hope.Baden, Linda J. Indiana University Art Museum: Dedication. Bloomington, IN: Museum, 1982. Print. The museum was intended to be the center of ...

, Bloomington *

Metropolitan Museum of Art The Metropolitan Museum of Art of New York City, colloquially "the Met", is the largest art museum in the Americas. Its permanent collection contains over two million works, divided among 17 curatorial departments. The main building at 1000 ...

, New York *

Museum of Contemporary Art Jacksonville The Museum of Contemporary Art Jacksonville, also known as MOCA Jacksonville, is a contemporary art museum in Jacksonville, Florida, funded and operated as a "cultural institute" of the University of North Florida. One of the largest contemporary ...

Museum of Modern Art The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) is an art museum located in Midtown Manhattan, New York City, on 53rd Street between Fifth and Sixth Avenues. It plays a major role in developing and collecting modern art, and is often identified as one of ...

, New York *

Philadelphia Museum of Art The Philadelphia Museum of Art (PMoA) is an art museum originally chartered in 1876 for the Centennial Exposition in Philadelphia. The main museum building was completed in 1928 on Fairmount, a hill located at the northwest end of the Benjamin Fr ...

, Philadelphia * Guggenheim Museum, New York * Wadsworth Atheneum, Hartford *

Whitney Museum of Art The Whitney Museum of American Art, known informally as "The Whitney", is an art museum in the Meatpacking District and West Village neighborhoods of Manhattan in New York City. It was founded in 1930 by Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney (1875–1942), ...

, New York

Grants and awards

* 1953: Pulitzer Traveling Fellowship * 1963: Charles of the Ritz Oil Painting Award * 1964: The Silvermine Guild Award for Oil Painting * 1977: Cleveland Arts Prize * 1980: Hassam Fund Purchase Award * 1988: Hassam Fund Purchase Award * 1994: New York State Art Teachers' Association Award * 1995: Emil and Dines Carlson Award * 1996: New Jersey Pride Award * 1997: Richard Florsheim Fund Grant * 2000: Lee Krasner Award * 2005: Lorenzo dei Medici Career Award, awarded at the Florence Biennale

Exhibitions

Anuskiewicz exhibited in many public collections around the world, including such New York galleries as Sidney Janis, The Contemporaries, and the Andrew Crispo Gallery. * 1955:

Butler Institute of American Art The Butler Institute of American Art, located on Wick Avenue in Youngstown, Ohio, United States, was the first museum dedicated exclusively to American art. Established by local industrialist and philanthropist Joseph G. Butler, Jr., the museum h ...

Youngstown Youngstown is a city in the U.S. state of Ohio, and the largest city and county seat of Mahoning County. At the 2020 census, Youngstown had a city population of 60,068. It is a principal city of the Youngstown–Warren metropolitan area, which ...

* 1966: Cleveland Museum of Art,

, Ohio * 1967: The Hopkins Center,

Hanover Hanover (; german: Hannover ; nds, Hannober) is the capital and largest city of the German state of Lower Saxony. Its 535,932 (2021) inhabitants make it the 13th-largest city in Germany as well as the fourth-largest city in Northern Germany ...

New Hampshire New Hampshire is a U.S. state, state in the New England region of the northeastern United States. It is bordered by Massachusetts to the south, Vermont to the west, Maine and the Gulf of Maine to the east, and the Canadian province of Quebec t ...

* 1968:

Kent State University Kent State University (KSU) is a public research university in Kent, Ohio. The university also includes seven regional campuses in Northeast Ohio and additional facilities in the region and internationally. Regional campuses are located in As ...

Kent Kent is a county in South East England and one of the home counties. It borders Greater London to the north-west, Surrey to the west and East Sussex to the south-west, and Essex to the north across the estuary of the River Thames; it faces ...

, Ohio * 1972:

Jacksonville, Florida Jacksonville is a city located on the Atlantic coast of northeast Florida, the most populous city proper in the state and is the largest city by area in the contiguous United States as of 2020. It is the seat of Duval County, with which the ...

* 1976: La Jolla Museum of Contemporary Art,

La Jolla, California La Jolla ( , ) is a hilly, seaside neighborhood within the city of San Diego, California, United States, occupying of curving coastline along the Pacific Ocean. The population reported in the 2010 census was 46,781. La Jolla is surrounded on ...

* 1977: Columbus Museum of Art,

Columbus Columbus is a Latinized version of the Italian surname "''Colombo''". It most commonly refers to: * Christopher Columbus (1451-1506), the Italian explorer * Columbus, Ohio, capital of the U.S. state of Ohio Columbus may also refer to: Places ...

, Ohio * 1978: Ringling Museum,

Sarasota, Florida Sarasota () is a city in Sarasota County on the Gulf Coast of the U.S. state of Florida. The area is renowned for its cultural and environmental amenities, beaches, resorts, and the Sarasota School of Architecture. The city is located in the sout ...

* 1978: Allentown Art Museum,

Allentown, Pennsylvania Allentown (Pennsylvania Dutch language, Pennsylvania Dutch: ''Allenschteddel'', ''Allenschtadt'', or ''Ellsdaun'') is a city in Lehigh County, Pennsylvania, Lehigh County, Pennsylvania. The city has a population of 125,845 as of the 2020 United ...

* 1979: Alex Rosenberg Gallery, New York City, New York * 1979: Clark Art Institute,

Williamstown, Massachusetts Williamstown is a town in the northern part of Berkshire County, in the northwest corner of Massachusetts, United States. It shares a border with Vermont to the north and New York to the west. It is part of the Pittsfield, Massachusetts Metropolit ...

* 1980:

Brooklyn Museum The Brooklyn Museum is an art museum located in the New York City borough of Brooklyn. At , the museum is New York City's second largest and contains an art collection with around 1.5 million objects. Located near the Prospect Heights, Crown H ...

Brooklyn Brooklyn () is a borough of New York City, coextensive with Kings County, in the U.S. state of New York. Kings County is the most populous county in the State of New York, and the second-most densely populated county in the United States, be ...

, New York * 1980: Carnegie Museums of Pittsburgh,

Pittsburgh Pittsburgh ( ) is a city in the Commonwealth (U.S. state), Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, United States, and the county seat of Allegheny County, Pennsylvania, Allegheny County. It is the most populous city in both Allegheny County and Wester ...

, Pennsylvania * 1984: Heckscher Museum of Art,

Huntington, New York The Town of Huntington is one of ten towns in Suffolk County, New York. Founded in 1653, it is located on the north shore of Long Island in northwestern Suffolk County, with Long Island Sound to its north and Nassau County adjacent to the west. ...

* 1984: Canton Art Institute,

Canton Canton may refer to: Administrative division terminology * Canton (administrative division), territorial/administrative division in some countries, notably Switzerland * Township (Canada), known as ''canton'' in Canadian French Arts and ent ...

, Ohio * 1986: Tampa Museum of Art,

Tampa Tampa () is a city on the Gulf Coast of the U.S. state of Florida. The city's borders include the north shore of Tampa Bay and the east shore of Old Tampa Bay. Tampa is the largest city in the Tampa Bay area and the seat of Hillsborough County ...

, Florida * 2005: Florence Biennale, Fortezza da Basso, Firenze, Italy

Bibliography

* Anuszkiewicz, Richard and Karl Lunde. "Anuszkiewicz." New York: H.N. Abrams (1977). * Alviani, Getulio, Margaret A. Miller and Giancarlo Pauletto. "Richard Anuszkiewicz: Opere 1961-1987." Pordenone: Centro Culturale Casa A. Zanussi (1988). * Buchsteiner, Thomas and Ingrid Mossinger. "Anuszkiewicz Op Art." Ostfildern: Hatje Cantz Publishers (1997). * Kolva, Jeanne, Maxine Lurie (ed.) and Marc Mappen (ed.). ''Anuszkiewicz, Richard.'' "Encyclopedia of New Jersey." New Brunswick: Rutgers University (2004). 9780813533254 * Madden, David and Nicholas Spike. "Richard Anuszkiewicz: Paintings & Sculptures 1945-2001: Catalogue Raisonné." Florence: Centro Di Edizioni (2010). * Price, Marshall N. "The Abstract Impulse: fifty years of abstraction at the National Academy, 1956-2006." Manchester: Hudson Hills Press (2007). * Ratliff, Floyd, Neil K. Rector and Sanford Wurmfeld. "Color Function Painting: The Art of Josef Albers, Julian Stanczak and Richard Anuszkiewicz." Winston-Salem: Wake Forest UJohn Gruen (September, 1979). "Richard Anuszkiewicz: A Beautiful Discourse with Space". ARTnews. University Fine Arts Gallery (1996). * Gruen, John (September, 1979). "Richard Anuszkiewicz: A Beautiful Discourse with Space". ARTnews: 68, 69, 72, 73, 74.

References

External links

"Op Out of Ohio" review
by Ken Johnson for the New York Times
Richard Anuszkiewicz Pronunciation

www.richardanuszkiewicz.com

rogallery.com
*

{{DEFAULTSORT:Anuszkiewicz, Richard 1930 births 2020 deaths Contemporary sculptors 20th-century American painters American male painters 21st-century American painters 21st-century American male artists American printmakers American abstract artists Yale School of Art alumni Cleveland School of Art alumni Cleveland Institute of Art alumni Op art 20th-century American sculptors 20th-century American male artists American male sculptors Artists from Erie, Pennsylvania Sculptors from Pennsylvania