Mauricio lasansky biography templates

Maurico Lasansky was one of the few modern artists who worked almost exclusively in the graphic media. Due to his early contributions in the development of graphic techniques and his dedication to printmaking, Lasansky was considered a forerunner in the evolution of the graphic arts as a critical art form and became recognized as one the “Fathers of 20 Century American Printmaking.”

Born in Buenos Aires, Argentina on October 12, , to an Eastern European immigrant who worked as an engraver of bank notes, Lasansky began attending the Superior School of Fine Arts in His background was partially responsible for his interest in printmaking and he began his career by making woodcuts. He later turned to intaglio, concentrating on drypoint, and his first solo exhibition was presented in at Fort General Roca, Argentina.

In , at the age of twenty-two, Lasansky had already become the director of the Free Fine Arts School in Villa Maria, Cordoba, Argentina. Francis Henry Taylor, director of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, met Lasansky in Argentina in and was so impressed with his work that, in , he arranged for Lasansky to travel to New York on a Guggenheim Fellowship. Shortly after his arrival, he sent for his wife and children, as “he didn’t want to go back to Peron.” Lasansky studied the entire print collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art and worked at Hayter’s experimental workshop, Atelier 17. This opportunity not only afforded him a wealth of knowledge about prints and printmakers but also exposed him to European artists displaced by the war.

The interest in printmaking as a fine art was revitalized in the United States in the mid s with the formation of the Works Progress Administration’s graphic arts workshops. Many artists continued to explore the medium after the WPA projects were discontinued. The most important and experimental of these workshops was Stanley William Hayter’s Atelier 17 which opene

The following is written by Academic Outreach Coordinator Kathryn Reuter

Mauricio Lasanky was born in Buenos Aires, Argentina in to Jewish immigrants from Lithuania. Lasansky showed artistic skill from a young age &#; printmaking was his preferred medium, a choice perhaps influenced by his father, who worked as a printer of banknote engravings. After completing high school, Lasansky studied printmaking at the Superior School of Fine Arts and after just three years, was named director of the Free School of Fine Arts in Cordoba, Argentina. His work caught the attention of Henry Francis Taylor, who was then director of the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Taylor recommended Lasansky for a Guggenheim Fellowship, a distinction Lasansky was awarded in —with a renewal in This fellowship allowed Lasansky to travel to New York City, where he worked at the famed printmaking workshop Atelier 17 and, over the course of two years, reportedly studied every. single. print. of the old masters in the collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s Department of Drawings and Prints (an estimated , works!).

In , as Lasansky’s Guggenheim Fellowship was coming to a close, University of Iowa president Virgil Hancher was looking for a Printmaker in Residence as part of the development of the University Art Department. Mauricio Lasansky accepted the position and while he initially planned on being in Iowa City for “just a year”, Lasansky taught at the University for forty years and established one of the most respected printmaking workshops in the country. By all accounts Lasansky was an exceptionally dedicated teacher; in his farewell letter to the director of the University Art Department in , he wrote:

“Somehow I will miss teaching since I don’t recall one day in my teaching one-to-one that was not enjoyable. For that I am grateful to the University, the Art Department, and above all to my students, who are scattered all over the world as you know. I can honestly say that I did the b

Sometimes, if we're lucky, we encounter an artist who reminds us of things outside the scope of our everyday lives. Sometimes its their work, or its their life as an artist that makes us catch our breath and we are surprised, shocked or stupefied into awe at what they say with their work, and how they do what they do. Such is the man, artist and teacher known as Mauricio Lasansky.

Before I embark upon the biography of this amazing man, I want to relate some thoughts. I will confess that I dreaded the day would come when the famed and highly esteemed printmaker/teacher Mauricio Lasansky would leave this world for a better place. I mourned his passing as though my own grandfather had died, because I felt in fact he was my artistic and spiritual ancestor. At least, that's what I came to feel having studied with one of his students, Robert Wolfe, at Miami University(OH).