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