Artists & Works

STYLE: Op-Art

Richard Anuszkiewicz trained under Josef Albers at the Yale University School of Art and Architecture in 1953–5. During 1959 to 1961 he began to produce abstract paintings, using either organic or geometric repeated forms. He then moved to more rigidly structured arrangements, which incorporated geometrical networks of colored lines, thus exploring the phenomenon of optical mixtures. In the late 1960s he began to make sculpture, but throughout all his work, to the present day, his main concern continues to be with the perception of colors and with the exploration of a variety of effects.

This untitled work is quite typical in its employment of a vivid, complex color modulation of red lines upon a blue ground. As the artist has stated (see critical excerpts below), the painting prompts the eye of the viewer to mix the colors, which are juxtaposed in such a way as to produce powerful luminous effects.

Source for biographical information: Grove Dictionary of Art, MacMillan, 2000.

CRITICAL EXCERPTS

Michael Auping, Abstraction, Geometry, Painting, Albright-Knox Art Gallery, 1989
"While in graduate school at Yale, Anuszkiewicz gradually turned away from realist painting as a direct result of being exposed to Albers' empirical teaching methods and emphasis on color relativity. By the late 1950s, representation had been completely eliminated from Anuszkeiwicz's paintings in favor of complex networks of abstract geometric shapes carrying a range of complementary colors that created confounding figure-ground relationships, offering contrasts between recessive and projective space. Although Anuzskiewicz's works were originally subsumed under the rubric Op, the subject of his work has never been optical illusion, per se, but the visual function of color. In Anuzskiewicz's paintings, optical illusion functions to structure the interaction of colors.Anuzskiewicz uses essentially three types of compositions to activate his colors: repeated, concentric geometric shapes, which the artist calls 'periodic structure,' a series of variously arranged or abbreviated periodic structure, which he calls 'interrupted systems'; and the use of rectilinear forms juxtaposing intensely contrasting colors, creating a powerful luminous effect which the artist calls 'irradiation.'...for him light is an exceedingly complex phenomena that is as emotional as it is 'scientific.'...'I'm interested in making something romantic out of a very, very mechanistic geometry. Geometry and color represent to me an idealized, classical place that's very clear and very pure.'"

David L. Shirey, “A Colorist Still Flauts Convention,” New York Times, 2/3/85
"We would not know so much about color today, nor feel so much about it, were it not for Richard Anuszkiewicz. He has changed the way we think about and respond emotionally to color, and has even affected our spiritual response to it.
''Color is my subject matter and its performance is my painting,' said the artist, who has lived with his wife, Sally, and three children in Englewood for the last 18 years.
''I've taken color a step further than it had been taken by the Impressionists and the Neo-Impressionists.'
...
The New York art scene became aware of what he could do with color in 1963. He received critical acclaim for an exhibition and sold nearly all the paintings in the show. His reputation was solidified in a Museum of Modern Art show, ''The Responsive Eye,'' which celebrated what has become known as Op (for optical) Art.
Today, his works are on display in major museums throughout the country and in the homes of major collectors. And although Mr. Anuszkiewicz's pioneering efforts in Op Art are frequently mentioned in art history texts, he believes that his work no longer fits the Op Art category.
'People thought that I always wanted to shock the eye,' he said in an interview. 'I didn't want to shock the eye. I wanted to use colors together that had never been used together before. I'm still doing what I was doing, but in greater depth.
'Like the Impressionists, I want the viewer to mix the colors in his eye. I do not want to mix them on the palette. This way, I get greater intensity of color and greater purity, too.
'Unlike the Impressionists, however, I've freed such explorations from subject matter and discovered greater freedom in non-objective art.'
Some critics have assailed him for his tricks with color, but failed to see that his color had a spiritual quickening about it.
His dramatic, inventive color schemes not only complement one another, they also sharply clash, collide and pit their sharp edges against one another in boisterous defiance.
The colors within his geometric designs give rise to an impression of different perspectives, of architectural- like spaces and of compositional movement. His strips and rectangles, depending on how they are seen, can be viewed alternately as positives or negatives, now rushing precipitously toward us, now rushing away.
'My thesis in graduate school at Yale dealt with the creation of space with line drawing,' Mr. Anuszkiewicz said. 'I explored how the line can be used to create space, and I still do that.'"