Richard Anuskiewicz: Color temper - SOLD
Richard Anuskiewicz
Color temper - 1970
Acrylic on canvas
91 x 91 cm
Signed, dated and numbered on the back of the canvas
Sidney Janis Gallery (New York) label with details on back of stretcher frame
Sold - 2009
Born Richard Joseph Anuszkiewicz, 1930 in Erie, Pennsylvania, USA
With a name synonymous with the Optical Art movement, Richard Anuszkiewicz first achieved international fame when he was included in the 1965 landmark show ‘The Responsive Eye’ at the Museum of Modern Art in New York. By this time, Anuszkiewicz had firmly established himself as the leader in the ‘Op Art’ movement.
Anuszkiewicz trained at the Cleveland Institute of Art from 1948 to 1953, and then with Josef Albers at Yale University where he earned an M.F.A. degree in 1955. Albers stirred his interest in the effects of colour on perception, and Anuszkiewicz began to study the underlying psychology of this. At this time he started to develop his theories on how the eye organizes visual material according to those psychological laws.
Anuskiewicz’s first show in New York, of what are now called Op Art paintings, took place at The Contemporaries Gallery in 1960. The Museum of Modern Art in New York purchased one of the paintings from that exhibition. In 1963, Anuszkiewicz participated in shows at the Museum of Modern Art and The Whitney Museum of American Art, and was the subject of a complimentary article in Time Magazine. Following the publication of that article, Anuszkiewicz sold 17 paintings in one month.
His first solo exhibition at the Sidney Janis Gallery in New York was in 1965. According to Janis, Anuszkiewicz was in such demand in the mid 1960’s, that the waiting list of people wanting to buy his work was longer than Jackson Pollock’s, whom Janis also represented.
Anuszkiewicz often incorporated geometrical networks of coloured lines, thus exploring the phenomenon of optical mixtures in his works. A pioneer in this non-representational style, Anuszkiewicz applied pigments directly to the canvas to mix optically instead of blending them on the palette. The strong internal structure of each work is not the result of a rigid system, however, but often of a trial-and-error approach to resolve aspects of composition.
Richard Anuszkiewicz remained faithful to the approach he established in the 1960’s, while developing more subtle colour modulations and sophisticated geometry in his later works. Unlike many other Op Art artists, his paintings are pleasing to the eye with smooth surfaces, and often give the impression that the design will continue beyond the framed edges.
Sources:
Matthew Baigell, Dictionary of American Art online
The Columbus Museum, Georgia - online biography