Richard Anuszkiewicz (American, 1930 - 2020) was born in Erie, Pennsylvania in 1930 as the child of Polish immigrants. Anuszkiewicz received a BFA from the Cleveland Institute of Art in 1953 and won a Pulitzer Traveling Fellowship which he used to study with Josef Albers at Yale, where he received his MFA in 1955. He also received a BS in Education from Kent State University in 1956. In 1957, Anuszkiewicz moved to New York and worked on restoration at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. He worked on commercial design projects and in public art while making works for exhibitions, including a solo show in 1955 and 1960. His work was featured in key exhibitions on geometric art and in publications in the 1960s, securing a place as a member of the American Op art (optical art) movement. Anuszkiewicz developed an interest in printmaking, specifically screenprints, in the early 1960s and they became a large part of his practice. He continued experimenting with color, form, and pattern while working in his home studio in New Jersey until his passing in 2020.
Anuszkiewicz is best known for a technique that he called "color performance." He described color as the most important factor in his work: "the image in my work has always been determined by what I wanted the color to do. Color function becomes my subject matter, and its performance is my painting."
4 works
4 works
