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. -Richard Anuskiewicz
Richard Anuszkiewicz received his bachelor’s degree from Cleveland Institute of Art in Ohio in 1953. He studied at Yale University School of Art and Architecture in New Haven, Connecticut from 1953 to 1955, where he earned his Masters of Fine Arts. His works were included in the seminal 1965 exhibition The Responsive Eye at the Museum of Modern Art and along with Victor Vasarely and Bridget Riley; he was considered a pioneer of the Optical Art Movement. Life magazine called him “The New Wizard of Op.”
While Anuszkiewicz is known for his important developments as an Op Artist, his paintings also call fourth other associations; mainly the rigorous color theory of his mentor Josef Albers. Anuszkiewicz activates the space around his vividly chromatic squares with diagonals radiating lines to suggest volumes of depth. His paintings explore the optical properties of color; challenging the eye of each viewer while investigating formal, structural and color effects
His work is included in many important public and private collections including The Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo, NY, Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago, IL, Brooklyn Museum, Brooklyn, NY, The Corcoran Museum of Art, Washington, DC, Denver Museum of Art, Denver, CO, Detroit Institute of Art, Denver, CO, Solomon R Guggenheim Museum, New York, NY, Hirschhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington, DC., Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, NY, Museum of Modern Art, New York, NY, Philadelphia Museum of Art, Philadelphia, PA and the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, NY.