Illustration for Inward Eye, Color serigraph
Painter. Born in Erie, Pennsylvania, Richard Anuszkiewicz studied at the Cleveland Institute of Art and began seriously painting in the 1950s as a student of the influential Bauhaus artist Josef Albers at Yale University. Anuszkiewicz dislikes the designation "Op art" coined in 1964 to describe many new paintings. "Scientific art" would be a more apt term. Early in his career, he stated that he was interested in exploring how the mind, based on definite psychological laws, organizes what the eye sees. Recoiling from Abstract Expressionism's abandon, his smoothly surfaced paintings combine repetition and organized procedures to create symmetrical patterns of geometric lines or blocks of color. Because no one part is dominant, his works can be understood as metaphors for the ideal of human equality. His works can also be considered to be two-dimensional equivalents to Buckminster Fuller's tensigrity, a modern architectural principle of balanced forces. After marrying Elizabeth (Sally) Feeney in 1960, Anuszkiewicz moved to Englewood. He taught at Cooper Union, Dartmouth, Cornell, and Kent State. Besides many one-man and group shows, in 1980, the Brooklyn Museum organized a mid-career retrospective. An outdoor mural near Journal Square in Jersey City marks his contribution to New Jersey's public art.
"Anuszkiewicz, Richard (b. May 23, 1930)." Encyclopedia of New Jersey. New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 2004. Credo Reference. Web. 10 October 2012.
Rhinoceros, Mezzotent 34/75
Mario Avati was born in Monaco in 1921. He studied at the Ecole des Arts Decoratifs in Nice and the Ecole des Beaux Arts in Paris. To date, Avati has made over 400 prints, primarily mezzotints, and illustrated six deluxe editions of books with original plates.
He was awarded the Prix de la Critique for drawing and printmaking, is member of the most important societies of printmakers in France and has had twenty-one man shows in Europe and the U.S. His work is included in international print shows (Tokyo, Ljubljana, Paris) and in the collection of the leading museums and institutions in the U.S., Europe and the Far East. The artist describes his prints as "the eternal struggle between light and darkness, day and night, life and death."