Edward Landon

EDWARD LANDON
(1911 - 1984)
Edward Landon was born March 13 in Hartford, Conn., to Per and Matilda Landin, recent arrivals
from Sweden. The youngest of three children he enrolled in the Hartford Art School while
completing his studies, and is where he became involved with a local theater company. His
Bohemian wanderings with the troupe inspired a deep affection for the theater, dance and
music, all-important themes manifested in numerous examples in his future work.
By the late 1920's, determined to become an artist, Landon set out for New York City. He
naturally gravitated toward Greenwich Village where he attended classes at the Art Students
League, learning to draw from the figure and confidant that he could "figure the rest out for
(him)self." He returned to Hartford at the start of the Depression where he was befriended by
Elisabeth McCausland. McCausland would emerge during the 1930's as leading scholar on
contemporary American art, and included Landon in her circle of artists and writers who met
regularly at her apartment. It was through this association that he was to meet Gertrude Stein,
Marcel Duchamp, Georgia O'Keefe, Paul Strand, Arthur Dove and others associated with the
most advanced currents in the modern arts. At twenty-two, Landon was well into an
investigation of Surrealism and with McCausland's influence became an eager student of
abstraction. Awarded a scholarship grant from the Guggenheim Foundation (1939-1941),
Landon created a series of abstract geometric paintings included in the 1942 show at the
Guggenheim Foundation.
During the latter 1930's and a student of the Art Student League, Landon made his first
acquaintances with artists experimenting with silkscreen. As soon as he had learned the
technique, Landon became so intrigued that he turned his back on paintbrushes and canvas in
favor of the squeegee and stencil. Though Landon's formal style would change over the years,
his anti-academic, non-conformist attitude would color his approach to art and the medium, as
well as his approach to life. Uninterested in replicating brushstrokes, surface density or other
characteristics generally associated with painting, Landon respected this new medium's
inherent qualities which for him involved simplifying his compositions, hardening the edges of
his forms and replacing the illusion of deep space with flat areas of color.
Landon became a pioneer in the development of serigraphy (an original American method of
fine color printmaking) and from the early forties until his death in 1984, he devoted the greater
balance of his artistic expression to this medium. He was awarded a Fulbright Research
Fellowship to Norway (1950-1951) where he introduced the process to European artists in
Norway and Sweden. He was president of the National Serigraph Society and was editor of
"Serigraph Quarterly". His body of work includes over 750 serigraphs, many of which are
included in all major public print collections including the Bibliotheque National, Paris; the
Library of Congress; the Museum of Modern Art; the National Museum of American Art; the
National Gallery, Stockholm; The Metropolitan Museum; Tel Aviv Museum, Israel; San Paulo
Museum, Brazil; Sydney Museum, Australia; Turku Museum, Finland; Victoria and Albert
Museum, England; San Francisco Museum of Art; US Government State Department, Boston
Museum of Fine Arts; British Museum; Carnegie Institute; Library of Congress; and over 25
College and University Art collections nationwide. His print "Buffoon" together with color
separation proofs is on permanent display as representing the medium at the Smithsonian
Institution in Washington D.C.
References:
Who's Who In America
Who's Who In American Art
Who's Who In The East
Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution
Dictionary of Contemporary American Artists, 5th. Ed.
Dictionary of International Biography, London
America Today. Equinox Press, New York 1936
Prize Winning Prints Of The Twentieth Century, American Artists Group'49
Artists Manual Of Silk Screen Printmaking, American Artists Group'46
Master Of The Silkscreen, Boston Globe New England Magazine 1977
American Screenprints, National Academy Of Design, N.Y.C.
Printmaking Today, Holt, Rienhart & Winston 1958
A Spectrum Of Innovation/Color In American Printmaking 1890-1960