Donald Anderson

Donald Anderson

(1915, Bridgewater, SD – 1995, Madison, WI)

Donald Anderson was originally from Bridgewater, South Dakota and later moved to Iowa where he studied at the University under neo-expressionist painter and printmaker, Philip Guston. From the University of Iowa, he received a BA and MA. Anderson also received formal training in drawing from Mexico City College.

Anderson taught one year at the University of Minnesota, Duluth before serving in the US Army as an illustrator in the Ordnance Department of the Pentagon and worked as a book designer for the army Adjutant General and the civil Aeronautics Board from 1941 to 1946. After the war, he moved to Madison to teach watercolor painting, design, and lettering at the University until 1982. He also worked as a designer for the State of Wisconsin, UW Press, and several magazines.

Furthermore, Anderson authored two books, “The Elements of Design” (1961) and “The Art of Written Forms” (1969). He edited and published two facsimiles of Renaissance calligraphic manuals and an artist’s book. Furthermore, during the 1970s and after his retirement from the University, he produced and sold calligraphic booklets from a booth on State Street Mall in Madison.

Anderson was heavily influenced by his teacher, Philp Guston who was part of the New York School (an art movement that included abstract expressionists Jackson Pollock and Willem de Kooning) and created cartoonish works depicting personal situations and symbols.[1] Along with Philip Guston, Anderson was influenced by Emil Ganso (1895 – 1941), a German-born lithographer and watercolorist, and Fletcher Martin (1904 – 1979), an illustrator, painter, and muralist who was known as for his American regionalist style and for images depicting the life of the WWII soldier.

Bibliography:

“A Century Plus of Wisconsin Watercolors: A Historical Overview of the Use of Watercolors During the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries in Wisconsin”, State Historical Society of Wisconsin, Madison; Nicolet College, Rhinelander; Wustum Museum of Fine Arts, Racine; West Bend Gallery of Fine Arts, West Bend; and University of Wisconsin-Oshkosh, 1976.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philip_Guston

The Museum of Wisconsin Art, “Donald Anderson”, http://www.wisconsinart.org/archives/artist/donald-myers-anderson/profile-340.aspx. Accessed January 8, 2018.