(Click to Enlarge)
Ink on Paper
8 1/2 x 11 inches
14 5/8 x 11 3/4 inches framed
Impression Estate of Robert O. Preusser lower right
Robert Omerod Preusser (American, b. 1919 – d. 1992) Abstract Expressionist Painter , Educator, was born in Houston, Texas in 1919. An Abstract Expressionist painter, preferring mixed media. He said that his “constant aim in painting is that of making evident an emotional expression and bringing it into a revealed tangible form through a combined intellectual and intuitive approach”. Preusser is considered to be an early member of the “Texas Mondernist” School which flourished there in the late 1920’s to 40’s. Critics have said that Preusser’s work shows the influence of European abstract artists Paul Klee and Wassily Kandinsky, and the American modernists, Arthur Dove and John Marin. Preusser began his art studies with McNeill Davidson in 1930 at the age of eleven, and in his early teens he began exhibiting nationally and internationally. Preusser went on to study at two of the most prestigious and “avant garde” schools of the day in The United States ; the first was with Laszlo Moholy Nagy at the Institute of Design in Chicago in the early 1940’s , (during World War II from 1942 to 1945, Preusser served as a camouflage expert with the U.S. Army’s “84th Engineer Camouflage Battalion” in North Africa, France, Italy and Germany specializing in enemy aerial reconnaissance deception by replicating towns, bridges and other land marks geographically off course) and after World War II with Robert Wolff at the Newcomb School of Art in New Orleans. Preusser then studied at the Art Center School in Los Angeles in 1946 and returned to Houston in 1947, Preusser then joined the faculty of the Houston Museum of Fine Arts School of Art (1947-54) ; became a co-founder of the Contemporary Arts Association in Houston in 1948; and founding co-director of the Contemporary Arts Association (forerunner of Houston Contemporary Arts Museum) from 1949 to 1951.Other teaching venues included the University of Houston (1951-1954) ; and Harvard University Graduate School of Design. Preusser moved to Massachusetts in 1954 to teach visual design at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). In 1974, he was appointed director of education at MIT’s Advanced Center for Visual Studies and retired in 1985. Exhibiting his work at galleries and museums since 1930 Preusser’s work can be found in private, and public collections around the world including; The Addison Gallery of American Art at The Phillips Academy, The Panhandle-Plains Historical Museum, The Smithsonian in Washington D.C., The Contemporary Art Museum-Houston, the Harrison Museum of Art at Utah State University, The Art Institute of Chicago ,and The Museum of Modern Art in New York City.