Jan Stussy

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Jan Stussy (born Fredric Benjamin Stussy, Jr .; born August 13, 1921 in Benton County , Missouri ; † July 31, 1990 in Brentwood , Los Angeles ) was an American painter and graphic artist who worked as a professor at the University of California, Los Angeles taught. He was awarded an Oscar for the documentary film Gravity Is My Enemy , which he produced together with John C. Joseph .

Life

His parents were Fred and Jessie Stussy. They married in Kansas , had two sons, and moved to Bellflower, California . Jan Stussy grew up in California, where he attended Excelsior High School until 1939, then Long Beach City College and the Art Center School in Pasadena . He received his bachelor's degree in 1943 from the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), where he was taught anatomy by the sculptor and ceramicist George J. Cox (1884-1946), among others. During World War II he worked for three years for the military intelligence of the Navy . He then returned to UCLA as a student and teaching assistant. He also continued his studies at the University of Southern California as a student of the painter and draftsman Francis de Erdely (1904-1959). In 1953, Stussy successfully completed his studies there with a Master of Fine Arts (MFA).

Stussy taught at UCLA from 1947 to 1989. From 1963 he was the first artist there to hold a full professorship. He taught various aspects of the fine arts , with a particular preference for anatomy and drawing. From 1957 to 1980 he also taught adult courses at the university and was awarded the Outstanding Teacher Award in the Visual Arts, UCLA Extension in 1979 . Stussy also taught at the University of California, Santa Barbara .

He went on study trips through Europe, South America, Mexico and Japan. In his home country he was involved in the California Water Color Society, among other things, of which he was elected vice president in 1950.

Stussy was friends with the artist Stanton Macdonald-Wright (1890–1973), who also gave him private lessons. In 1949 he married the sculptor Maxine Kim Stussy (* 1923; later Maxine Frankel), whom he had met the previous year as a teaching assistant at UCLA. The marriage produced a son. In 1982 the couple, who had also worked closely together artistically, divorced. Jan Stussy was an uncle of Shawn Stussy who founded the Stüssy clothing brand in the early 1980s . The brand's logo is based on Jan Stussy's signature.

Jan Stussy died in 1990 at the age of 68 of a brain tumor in his apartment in Brentwood . In the same year the Jan Stussy Foundation was founded, which administered his artistic estate including over 1000 works. In 2007 Maxine Frankel donated the collection to the Woodbury School of Architecture (Woodbury University). Part of Stussy's estate (correspondence, photos, tapes, catalogs) is in the Archives of American Art.

The art historian Albert Boime (1933–2008), professor at UCLA, wrote a biographical work on Jan Stussy ( The Odyssey of Jan Stussy in Black and White , 1995).

plant

Stussy created over 5,000 paintings, 12,000 drawings, as well as screen prints , lithographs , etchings and sculptures. In his works he often depicts deformed figures (naked people, animals, flowers) that are in geometric shapes such as cubes or circles. In addition to watercolor and oil painting, he also experimented with other painting techniques. Instead of canvas, he often used building materials as a substrate. One of his best-known works was the series Man in a Box, begun in 1963 .

In 1970, Stussy took part in the Tamarind Lithography Workshop founded by June Wayne with the help of a scholarship . The series of lithographs he created in the process can be found in the collections of the National Gallery of Art and the Los Angeles County Museum of Art .

Solo exhibitions of his works (or often double exhibitions with his wife) took place mainly in Southern California and in the southwest of the USA, most recently in the Frederick S. Wight Art Gallery (1984/1985), the Mendocino Art Center (2012, Significant Content , retrospective) and the WUHO Gallery (2016/2017, The Human Beast: Art of Maxine Kim Stussy & Jan Stussy , retrospective). He also took part in group exhibitions, for example at the Museum of Modern Art (1962/1963, Recent Painting USA: The Figure , traveling exhibition) and Pasadena Museum of California Art (2012, LA RAW: Abject Expressionism in Los Angeles 1945–1980, From Rico Lebrun to Paul McCarthy ).

In 1977 Stussy co-produced the documentary Gravity Is My Enemy with John C. Joseph . The film portrays one of Stussy's art students, Mark Hicks, who has been paralyzed since a childhood accident and paints and draws by holding tools between his teeth. Both producers won an Oscar in 1978 in the Best Documentary Short Film category.

Works (selection)
  • "A free man is he that in those things which by his strength and wit he is able to do, is not hindered to do what he has a will to." Thomas Hobbes , Leviathan, 1651. From the series Great Ideas of Western Man . Oil on canvas, 1965, 122 × 122 cm, Smithsonian American Art Museum
  • Self-Portrait in Anatomical Sweatshirt , 1965. Acrylic, charcoal and photo collage on masonite
  • 9 of the 8 Views of Omi Suite (9 Tamarind lithographs), with David Trowbridge (* 1945), 1970, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, National Gallery of Art
  • Boxed Man in a Box , 1970, lithograph, 56.2 × 73 cm, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, National Gallery of Art

literature

  • Albert Boime: The odyssey of Jan Stussy in black and white: anxious visions and uncharted dreams. Jan Stussy Foundation, Los Angeles 1995.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Jan Stussy on deathfigures.com
  2. ↑ a b c Sam Amato Elliot Elgart: University of California: In Memoriam, 1994 Jan Stussy, Art: Los Angeles. texts.cdlib.org. Retrieved January 1, 2019.
  3. ↑ a b c d e f Jan Stussy collections.lacma.org. Retrieved January 1, 2019.
  4. ↑ Burt A. Folkart: January Stussy; Multimedia Artist, 1st Full UCLA Art Professor. In: Los Angeles Times . 5th August 1990.
  5. ^ A b Donald E. Paglia: Significant Content. Jan Stussy and the Mendocino Art Center. In: Mendocino Arts Magazine. 2012 (PDF). Retrieved January 1, 2019.
  6. ↑ Stussy / Frankel Fund woodbury.edu. Retrieved January 1, 2019.
  7. ↑ Jan Stussy papers, 1950-1985 aaa.si.edu. Retrieved January 1, 2019.
  8. ↑ a b The Human Beast: Art of Maxine Kim Stussy & Jan Stussy wuho.architecture.woodbury.edu. Retrieved January 1, 2019.
  9. ↑ January Stussy moma.org. Retrieved January 1, 2019.
  10. ↑ Gravity Is My Enemy aaspeechesdb.oscars.org. Retrieved January 1, 2019.
  11. ↑ Acrobat Family Variations famsf.org. Retrieved January 1, 2019.
  12. ↑ January Stussy americanart.si.edu. Retrieved January 1, 2019.
  13. ↑ January Stussy nga.gov. Retrieved January 1, 2019.
personal data
SURNAME Stussy, Jan
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Stussy, Fredric Benjamin Jr .; Stussy, Jan Frederick; Stüssy, Jan
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American artist and university professor
DATE OF BIRTH August 13, 1921
PLACE OF BIRTH Benton County , Missouri
DATE OF DEATH July 31, 1990
Place of death Brentwood , Los Angeles