Richard Anuszkiewicz

born Erie, Pennsylvania, 1930

BiographyBorn in 1930 in Erie, Pennsylvania, Richard Anuszkiewicz grew to love painting at a very early age. He developed his education at various colleges including a B.F.A. from the Cleveland Institute of Art, an M.F.A from Yale University, studying under the highly influential color theorist Josef Albers, and finally a Bachelor of Science degree from Kent State University in Ohio. A student of Josef Albers, he shares Albers' fascination with shapes and their relationships to color.

Considered a major force in the op art movement, Anuszkiewicz is concerned with the optical changes that occur when different high-intensity colors are applied to the same geometric configurations. Each of his prints has its own rhythm and, therefore, its own energy as part of a lyrical composition.

He has won many awards and has been a frequent exhibitor in museums throughout the world. His work is included in the collections of the Corcoran Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C., the Fogg Museum of Harvard University in Cambridge, and the Whitney Museum of American Art and the Museum of Modern Art in New York. In 1957 he moved to New York City where he soon received critical success in various one-man exhibitions as well as acquisitions by the Museum of Modern Art and inclusion in the Whitney Museum of American Art Annual Exhibition in 1963. By 1965 Anuszkiewicz had firmly established himself as the Optical art movement leader by his inclusion in an historically important exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art, "The Responsive Eye".

Sources:
http://www.richardanuszkiewicz.com
http://art.state.gov/artistdetail.aspx?id=137976
www.rogallery.com
http://erieartmuseum.org/exhibits/exhibits2012/Anuszkiewicz/Anuszkiewicz.html

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