Ralph L. Wickiser

Ralph L. Wickiser				Illustrative History

Wickiser painting in plein air, ca. 1934

Ralph Lewanda Wickiser was born in Greenup, Illinois in 1910. From a very early age, Ralph wanted to be a painter. The earliest known paintings are watercolors from his second grade class, which exhibited extraordinary talent at a very young age. His teacher praised and encouraged his artwork. (image on right)

When Ralph was 18, he left Greenup and went to study at the Art Institute of Chicago Illinois, where he learned life drawing from 1928-1931. However during the Depression, he could no longer support himself in Chicago and had to return to Greenup. From there, his mother suggested he attend the state teachers’ college at Eastern Illinois University in Charleston, Illinois. At E.I. he studied art, despite his frustration at the lack of modern art education at the time in America. During these years, a famous Brown County artist, Paul Turner Sargent (1880 - 1946) took Ralph under his wing and taught him a lot about painting. Ralph would often accompany him to paint outdoors. He graduated with a BA in arts in 1934 and went to NY to visit Columbia University. That summer he lived at the Tiffany Foundation in Oyster Bay and painted. Following was an exhibit at the well-known Grand Central Art Galleries in April 1934, where one of his paintings was reproduced and reviewed in ARTnews.

In 1936, Ralph married Jane Ann Bisson whom he met while attending Eastern Illinois University. He continued to exhibit his paintings and that year his work was shown at the Rockefeller Center in New York. Since the early 30’s, Ralph’s style of painting was constantly going back and forth from abstraction and representationalism. That same year, he took a position at the Louisiana State University in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, while simultaneously working on his Ph.D. in philosophy at Vanderbilt and Peabody. While at Vanderbilt, he remained a very active painter and exhibitor of his works. From 1937-1941, his work traveled to many museums throughout the country in an exhibition entitled “A New Southern Group” including the High Museum in Atlanta, Georgia. In 1938 he received his PhD.

In 1939, Ralph made his first trip to Woodstock, New York to study lithography with Emil Ganso. That was the beginning of Ralph and Jane’s annual summer pilgrimages to Woodstock. While there, he was exposed to contemporary art movements and artists such as Milton Avery, and Philip Guston. Yasuo Kuniyoshi gave a big party for Ralph and Jane at his house to introduce them to his Woodstock friends, and Ralph invited Paul Burlin and Yasuo Kuniyoshi to LSU to lecture to the LSU art students. This led to long friendships with Arnold Blanch, Paul Burlin, Roland Crampton, Franz Kline, Yasuo Kuniyoshi, Dorris Lee, Eddie Millman and Barnett Newman.

In 1946, he was a contributing editor to the Encyclopedia of the Arts. It was his interest in art education and the lack of good textbooks on modern art education at this time that led Wickiser to write An Introduction to Art Activities published by Henry Holt and Co. in 1947. This book became one of the most widely used textbooks for teaching art in colleges and universities at the time. Also in 1947, Wickiser coauthored “Mardi Gras Day” with Caroline Durieux and John McCrady, two other well-known Louisiana artists.

The summers in Woodstock continued till finally in 1949, Ralph and Jane bought land there and built a house and a studio. In 1950, Wickiser hosted a conference at the Woodstock Artists Association with talks by Franz Kline, Motherwell, and Kuniyoshi. In 1951, Wickiser hosted the Forth Annual Conference on Art at the Woodstock Artist Association. Speakers were Herman Cherry, Franz Klein, Yasuo Kuniyoshi, Robert Motherwell, Barnett Newman and Ben Shawn. Kuniyoshi worked with Ralph on the conferences and helped organize them. In 1950 his work was shown at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York and at the Pennsylvania Academy in 1951.

From 1950 through 1968, the focus of Ralph’s painting was non-objective and the series that came about were entitled Compassion I (1950-1958), and Compassion II (1959-1968). Most of the work was inspired by Grunewald’s Isenheim Altarpiece which he often thought was one of the greatest artworks ever made. In the Compassion I paintings he wanted to create a visual feeling of uplifting or resurrection thru the use of square shaped panels throughout the paintings and glazes.

In 1953, his work was included in the 1953 Annual Exhibition of Contemporary American Painting at the Whitney Museum with such artists as Milton Avery, Ralston Crawford, William de Kooning, Adolph Gotlieb, Philip Guston, Georgia O’Keefe, and Jackson Pollock. In 1954, his work was exhibited at the Cincinnati Museum. He continued to exhibit at the Woodstock Artist Association and his lithographs were in a State Department traveling exhibition in Europe from 1954-1956.

In 1956, Ralph left Louisiana State University to direct the art education division at State University of New York (SUNY) at New Paltz. During this time, he worked on his final but most popular book An Introduction to Art Education by the World Book Company, which was published in 1957.

Wickiser always wanted to live in New York City, and after a brief stint at SUNY, he left to Chair the Undergraduate Art Department at Pratt Institute in Brooklyn. In 1959, his works were included in exhibitions at the Brooklyn Museum, Long Island University, and The Momentum Institute of Design in Chicago. In 1962, he became the Director of the Division of Graduate Programs in Art and Design at Pratt Institute. The Master of Fine Arts Program offered at Pratt Institute was one of a few of its kind in the United States at that time. During that time, faculity members included Ernie Briggs, Herman Cherry, Ed Dougmore, Franz Klein, Jacob Lawrence, George McNeil, Stephen Pace, and Philip Pearlstein. Ralph formed particularly close friendships with Jacob Lawrence, George McNeil, and Stephen Pace. In a series consisting mostly of 8’ by 6’ paintings entitled Compassion II, he continued to painting in pure abstraction; however, the work took on more of an expressionist feeling. Exhibitions continued at the Woodstock Artist Association in 1960,1961,1963, and 1969, and there were exhibitions at the Main Gallery, at Pratt, in 1960,1966, and 1968 thru 1971.

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